What if: Many Are Called (Free Will), Few Are Chosen (Predestined).

[yeshuaslavejeff]

I think Jonah would disagree my friend.

Nope.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Jonah was coerced into going to Nineveh against his will.

 

[redleghunter]

What if the sky were blue?

I was in Baghdad a lot and don’t remember the sky blue there.

 

[redleghunter]

Jonah was coerced into going to Nineveh against his will.

Well he came around after gut wrenching storms at sea and a short stay in the belly of a sea beasty. He finally realized humility and obedience was the right course.

 

[JackRT]

Jonah was coerced into going to Nineveh against his will.

Yes, that is how the story reads. It is well to remember that the Book of Jonah is a fiction, a sort of extended parable, intended to address a societal problem at a certain time and place in history.

 

[redleghunter]

Yes, that is how the story reads. It is well to remember that the Book of Jonah is a fiction, a sort of extended parable, intended to address a societal problem at a certain time and place in history.

Actually it is historically correct. Jesus would never base His 3 days in the earth on a lie.

Matthew 12:NASB

38Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” 39But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; 40for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41“The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. 42“The Queen of the South will rise up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.

 

[woobadooba]

God predestined a plan for salvation. People are free to embrace it or to reject it. We own our own choices. God doesn't force us to believe a certain way. If anyone ends up damned, it is only because he or she chose the wrong path.

 

[woobadooba]

Yes, that is how the story reads. It is well to remember that the Book of Jonah is a fiction, a sort of extended parable, intended to address a societal problem at a certain time and place in history.

And where is your proof of this? Just because something is hard for YOU to believe, it doesn't make it untrue.

 

[JackRT]

It was a profound shock to the people of Judah when the City of Jerusalem fell to the army of the Babylonians in the early years of the 6th century BCE. This city had not been conquered by an invading power since 1000 BCE, when David himself had taken it from the Jebusites to make it the capital of his newly unified country. When Solomon erected the Temple in Jerusalem, the people began to think that this holy city now lived under the protection of its indwelling deity. That idea was shattered with the city's fall in 596. The subsequent relocation of the Jewish people into a Babylonian exile only continued the shock and increased the despair.

The depth and pain of these reactions was located in the firm belief that somehow the Jews were God's chosen and favored people. Yet the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the people seemed a strange way for the "chosen people" to be treated by their God. Life has to be endured as it comes, however, and so the Jews lived apart from their holy city and their sacred soil for several generations. Finally, the Persians defeated the Babylonians and allowed the descendants of the exiled Jews to return and resettle their native land. Jewish pilgrims returned in smaller and larger groups over the next two centuries.

The Jews dealt with this trauma in their history by trying to explain why God had allowed the defeat and exile of the chosen people. All of their understanding of God drove them to find some rationality in this experience. This was especially true when a sufficient number had returned to allow them finally to begin to rebuild their country. They wanted to make sure that God's wrath would not descend on them again. They needed to know how they had offended God so that this behavior would never be repeated. Their first explanation was emotionally unsatisfying for it placed blame for unfaithfulness on their own ancestors and dishonored their parents, in direct violation of the Ten Commandments. Then they hit on what seemed a better idea. Alien influences were to blame, they said, "Some of our weaker ancestors had married foreign partners. These Gentile elements then brought corruption to our nation by polluting the true faith and the racial purity of God's people." The way to avoid a future disaster thus seemed clear. They must purge the nation of its non-Jewish elements by banishing them from the land. The half-breed children of these unholy unions must also go. The new land of the Jews must be for Jews only. So the law was decreed and vigilante squads were loosed on the people with instructions to check blood lines to the tenth generation in order to guarantee the racial purity of the newly established Jewish state. The true worship of a pure Jewish people was the only way to secure God's blessing. The Jewish state thus entered a period of internal violence.

It was because of the atmosphere produced by this mentality that an unknown Jewish person, presumably a man since women were not taught to write at this time, went to his home to devise a means of challenging these prevailing attitudes. He could not attack them openly in a public, political way, for that would be interpreted as running the risk of new defeat and a new exile. He had to confront these attitudes obliquely until their destructiveness was made clear. He had to find a way to hold up a mirror and to force the ruling authorities to look directly into it. Taking his quill in hand he decided to write a fanciful story filled with the exaggeration of a world of make believe, but so enchanting that everyone would want to hear it. In the privacy of his home, he did just that. When he had finished, a text of this story appeared suddenly and anonymously in Jerusalem at the height of the ethnic cleansing. The town crier gathered some people around him in a public square and this is the story he read.

Once upon a time there was a prophet in Israel whose name was Jonah. God called to Jonah and told him that he must go to preach to the people of Nineveh. "Nineveh," said Jonah, "you must be kidding. That is an unclean Gentile city. Why would you want me to do something that weird?" God was adamant, however, and God's message was clear, so Jonah had to respond. He did so in the classic way that people do when they are told by an authority figure to do something they really do not want to do, that is, Jonah said "Yes" but he meant "No" since he had no intention of obeying. Jonah, however, went through all the motions. He went to his home, packed a suitcase, went down to the port and booked passage on a boat, but to Tarshish and not to Nineveh. One does not go by sea to Nineveh. If caught, he reasoned, he could claim that he had misunderstood and by this time, God surely would have had second thoughts. All went well as Jonah boarded, unpacked his suitcase in his stateroom, put on his Bermuda shorts, got a good book and positioned himself topside in a deck chair as the ship pulled out into the Mediterranean Sea. The trip was uneventful until a dark cloud in the sky seemed to be shadowing the boat. Aware of this dark presence, the captain tried to escape it by turning the boat both to the right and to the left, but the cloud responded by turning in concert with the boat. While the rest of the sky was clear and blue, this cloud got darker and darker and from within it came flashes of lightning, the roar of thunder and finally rain. So strange was this phenomenon that the captain drew the obvious conclusion, "Someone up there does not like someone down here." In what he regarded as a scientific fashion, he sought to identify the culprit. He drew straws and the lot fell on Jonah. "What is this that you have done, Jonah?" "Well, God did tell me to go preach to the Ninevites, but I knew that God did not really care for the Ninevites, so I booked passage on this boat." The captain, who did not care for Ninevites either, understood and thought he would ride out the storm until a bolt of lightning struck near and a wave from the sea swept over the boat, hurling Jonah's deck chair from one end of the ship to the other. That was when the captain weighed his own security against Jonah's decision and decided that Jonah had to go. So, with the help of three deck hands, Jonah was seized by his limbs and on the count of three they heaved him overboard.

Jonah never hit the sea. God had created a great fish (the word whale never occurs in this story) that had been swimming in tandem with this boat waiting for its moment in the drama. Jonah fell into its open jaws, which closed over him, and Jonah found himself living in the belly of this great fish. Jonah had amazing adaptive qualities, so he settled down to make his new home comfortable by rearranging the furniture and hanging the curtains. For three days and nights, Jonah lived in this new, but somewhat confining, Mediterranean condominium until even the great fish got tired of Jonah (I think he smoked) and so, with a great primeval belch, the fish threw up Jonah, who tumbled head over heels onto a conveniently located sandbar. Jonah was clearing his head and taking in his new situation, when he heard a voice saying, "Jonah how would you like to preach to the people of Nineveh?" "Okay, God," he said, "You win. I'll go."

In one verse Jonah was in Nineveh, but still convinced that God was making a mistake, so he opted for a new form of resistance. In Frank Sinatra fashion, he concluded, "I'll do it, but I'll do it my way! I'll preach to the Ninevites, but I'll do it by muttering under my breath and only on the back streets and alley ways of the city." Around the city he went saying: "God says to repent. Repent and turn to God," hoping no one would hear. To his amazement everyone heard. Crowds gathered from every house and condominium confessing their sins, tearing their clothes in repentance and begging for God's mercy. Jonah was the most successful evangelist in the history of the world. Jerry Falwell would have eaten his heart out for this kind of response.

Jonah, however, was angry. Storming out of town, he said: "I knew this would happen, God. That is why I did not want to come. These wretched people deserve punishment. I know you, God! I know you will forgive! Why does your love not stop at the boundary of my love?"

Jonah found a spot outside the city where he sat and sulked. The sounds of the revival could be heard as "Sweet Hour of Prayer" was being sung by the penitents. God was strangely silent and night fell. When Jonah awoke, a giant plant had grown up near his head. During the day Jonah found protection from the desert sun in its foliage and sanctuary from the biting desert wind in its trunk. That night God created a worm that ate the giant tree, leaving only a small pile of sawdust. When Jonah awoke, he was distraught at the loss of his beloved tree. He wept, mourned and felt the depth of bereavement. Finally, God broke the divine silence and said, "Jonah, how is it that you can have such passionate feelings about this tree and yet no compassion for the 120,000 people of Nineveh, to say nothing of their cattle?"

The Book of Jonah ends there. Imagine that story being read on the streets of Jerusalem while ethnic cleansing was taking place in the city. As the story unfolded, the people roared at the depth of Jonah's bigotry until they realized that Jonah was a fictional portrayal of themselves.

The Book of Jonah remains in the Bible to this day to counter human attempts to say that the love of God is limited to the limits of my love or my religion's ability to love. There are no boundaries on the love of God. That is the message of Jonah. In God there are no distinctions between Jew and Gentile, male and female, black and white, gay and straight, left handed and right handed. God's invitation is "Come unto me, all ye" not "some of ye." We are to come "just as we are, without one plea." How dare Popes or Archbishops of Canterbury or religious institutions anywhere define anyone as beyond the limits of God's embracing love! When any ecclesiastical leader or religious tradition excludes or diminishes any child of God for the sake of "unity" or by defining God's love as limited, the Book of Jonah stands as biblical judgment on that leader and those attitudes.
~~~ John Shelby Spong

 

[redleghunter]

So that’s someone’s theory based on what exactly? God does not deal in the supernatural?

Edit: whoops see this is from Resurrection denier bishop Spong

 

[Neostarwcc]

The way I understand predestination is that every single person who God forenew would come to Jesus for salvation was chosen by God before the foundation of the world. The reason we spread the gospel is because that way someone can come to Christ and accept his gift of salvation. God uses man to spread the good news and also does his part in working faith into unrepentant hearts.

 

[redleghunter]

You jump a huge logical gap when you equate "called" with free will. I will assume you did so for simplicity just to make your point. But I have to think, when you contrast free will with predestination (something the Bible does not do, unless "free will" means sovereignty), your use of it means sovereignty. Well, sir, there can be only one absolute sovereign. And absolute in that regard logically demands not only that nothing has any rule over him, but also that all things are subject to and in control of that sovereign.

I believe this is the main issue of many of these thread topics. The original premise is flawed but you define it well above.

 

[Roidecoeur78]

"Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul. Again, When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand.Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul."

I'm glad you've noticed this, and it's most likely why Jesus the Christ referred to himself as the "son of man". He is the appointed watchman, as are those predestined to be conformed to His example of living and dying. Which is why He went on to say "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin." John 15:22 and "For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken."John 12:49
Which means an integral part of His mission to salvage us from utter destruction is by letting us know that hell is real; and warning that we are headed there if we live for the self rather than the Creator. In fact, His love is so beyond carnal desires and fear of bodily death, He was willing to be tortured and killed just for saying and doing these things to, and in front of, politically powerful and corrupt people that didn't want to hear it (so how can they escape damnation?). That's part of what makes Him perfectly without sin, not just that He does no evil, but on top of all the healing, forgiving, casting out of demons, and everything else, His perfect goodness does not omit to warn others of where sin will lead them.

Jesus doesn’t only reference hell, he describes it in great detail. He says it is a place of eternal torment (Luke 16:23), of unquenchable fire (Mark 9:43), where the worm does not die (Mark 9:48), where people will gnash their teeth in anguish and regret (Matt. 13:42), and from which there is no return, even to warn loved ones (Luke 16:19–31). He calls hell a place of “outer darkness” (Matt. 25:30), comparing it to “Gehenna” (Matt. 10:28), which was a trash dump outside the walls of Jerusalem where rubbish was burned and maggots abounded. Jesus talks about hell more than he talks about heaven, and describes it more vividly. There’s no denying that Jesus knew, believed, and warned against the absolute reality of hell. So anyone that is predestined to conform to His example will do the same.

That's a primary reason for why the word must be preached, because you are your brother's keeper. Because if you are aware souls are in danger, even neglecting to warn them is a sin. "Therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me." If you warn them, "thou hast delivered thy soul" from being responsible for their blood. If you know the truth and do not warn them... "anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them." James 4:17

 

[BNR32FAN]

God needs our free will choices to accomplish his plan.

I don’t know a single person who says that. Those who believe it is by our choice in cooperation with God’s grace that we are saved believe that is the way God intended it to be. Nobody said God needs anything from us. He simply left our fate in our own hands. Otherwise why does God want everyone to repent and be saved and yet only chooses the few elect so then those who were not chosen could not possibly be saved because God didn’t choose them? The reason we must choose God is simple. God desires our love and love is a gift given freely.

 

[tdidymas]

You said, "The means by which God chooses is the calling,..." I hope that means something to you different from how it sounds. I hope you are not saying that God chooses based on something that happens to us (the calling, or perhaps even our response to the calling) or anything that we do. God makes his choice(s) by means of his own council for his own purposes. We are not privy to exactly what he is building, even though we know a lot of words and thoughts about it.

No, I am referring to "many are called, but few are chosen" and "whom He predestined, these He also called." Members of Christ are the called out ones. I'm referring to the Biblical sense of calling. God is the one who calls us, through the preaching of the gospel.
TD

 

[martymonster]

Hey, what if, you either accept freewill or accept that we don't have freewill, and stop trying to find a way to make God's word gel with your church doctrines.

 

[Der Alte]

Hey, what if, you either accept freewill or accept that we don't have freewill, and stop trying to find a way to make God's word gel with your church doctrines.

We, mankind, have "free will" in the same sense that Israel and Judah had "free will" in Jeremiah 13:9-14.

 

[chilehed]

I was in Baghdad a lot and don’t remember the sky blue there.

Here in S.E. Michigan I can expect the sky to be grey for weeks at a time in the winter. *sigh*

 

[BNR32FAN]

Hey, what if, you either accept freewill or accept that we don't have freewill, and stop trying to find a way to make God's word gel with your church doctrines.

It’s a discussion brother. We should support discussing God’s word to better understand and help others see different perspectives.

 

[martymonster]

Yeah, within reason. The key word here, being reason.