Is God In Control of All Things

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And




2Peter3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

See God's Will is that Every Man be Saved
Free Will Allows man to Either Accept this or Reject it.


That is why for now we are under the season of Grace. God is waiting Patiently until His set time and He will call this done and take back Full Control in this earth. We see this time in the book of The Revelation of Jesus.

The god or ruler of this world at this time is working 24/7/365 to prevent as many as he can from Accepting this Priceless Gift of Salvation.

One Avenue is cute little religious sayings that are Devastating to All that Swallow and believe them.

Blessings
FCJ

Again.....mans freewill does not change the will of God.

Yes, I agree with your statement that "freewill allows man to either accept this or reject it".

But I am sure that you already know that in the predestination of God's grace, He already knows who will accept or reject.
People can take one of two extremes in regard to this question. Some emphasize the sovereignty of God to the point that human beings are little more than robots simply doing what they have been sovereignly programmed to do. Others emphasize free will to the point of God not having complete control and/or knowledge of all things. Neither of these positions is biblical. The truth is that God does not violate our wills by choosing us and redeeming us. Rather, He changes our hearts so that our wills choose Him. “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19), and “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16).

Once again that shows us that mans freedom to choose does not effect the will of God.
 
Once again that shows us that mans freedom to choose does not effect the will of God.


Hi Major
Does It?
Yes God does tug on man's heart but man can simply turn and walk away. It happens all the time.

I agree God knows the end from the beginning but again this does not constitute that God is in control of Everything here in this earth nor does it say God already has picked out who will and will not be saved.

Now let's separate the Will of God for man and God's plan for man and what God has already determined will be done.

Now then.....
God's Will for man
is His Written word. It is the same for every man born of a woman.

........now then even Christians can choose to not accept His will for man (His Word and ways of doing things) in fact Sir, they do it all the time.

Now then
God's plan for man

Each man born from a woman has a calling or a plan for their life.
It is However up to Each individual to seek God and learn of this plan and get equipped to walk it out.

Again man has the choice to say Yes or no and do their own thing.
Again it happens all the time.

Now then
What God wants done
in this earth before Jesus comes back will get done........

Again.....However who does it or gets used is Not Set in stone.
God will use the ones who are Willing to be Willing.

Blessings
FCJ
 
Hi Major
Does It?
Yes God does tug on man's heart but man can simply turn and walk away. It happens all the time.

I agree God knows the end from the beginning but again this does not constitute that God is in control of Everything here in this earth nor does it say God already has picked out who will and will not be saved.

Now let's separate the Will of God for man and God's plan for man and what God has already determined will be done.

Now then.....
God's Will for man
is His Written word. It is the same for every man born of a woman.

........now then even Christians can choose to not accept His will for man (His Word and ways of doing things) in fact Sir, they do it all the time.

Now then
God's plan for man

Each man born from a woman has a calling or a plan for their life.
It is However up to Each individual to seek God and learn of this plan and get equipped to walk it out.

Again man has the choice to say Yes or no and do their own thing.
Again it happens all the time.

Now then
What God wants done
in this earth before Jesus comes back will get done........

Again.....However who does it or gets used is Not Set in stone.
God will use the ones who are Willing to be Willing.

Blessings
FCJ
I would say that now you have crossed over into the doctrine of Predestination.

The conflict then becomes Election or Free Will choice. The only way one can know that he is elect is by believing. Prior to death it is impossible to be sure that one is non elect since it is conceivable that at any moment a person might trust in Christ.


How can both of these be true? How can God elect and man choose? There is a mystery here. Somehow it works out perfectly that everyone God sovereignly elects freely chooses to trust in Christ. So, too, all He does not elect freely choose to reject Christ.

An illustration may help here. When we walk through the Pearly Gates of the New Jerusalem we may look up and see a sign that says "whoever believes in Him has everlasting life." Upon passing through the Gates if we look back we may see another sign that reads, "elect before the foundation of the world." Which is true? Did we believe or did God elect? Both. Those are not exclusive ideas.

Another example would be "Schrodinger's Cat" in a box theory. If you have a box and in that box is a cat. You do not know that the cat is alive or dead until you open the box.
Therefore the cat is both dead and alive at the same time and the only way to know the difference is to open the box. That of course speaks to our "choice" on whether or not to open the box.

Pastor John Piper once said on this subject..............
"Man’s will is free if he has the power of ultimate self-determination. Only God has free will in the sense of ultimate self-determination. No one has the power of ultimate self-determination to get themselves to God. God gives or withholds the power to come. Nudges to come will not save anybody. What is given by God is the coming."

I understand your thinking Jim, however IMO the Scriptures do not support it.

Psalm 115:3 ............
"Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. "

Job 42:2.........
“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted."

Ephesians 1:11.............
"In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will".
 
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Major

Psalm 115:3 .........
"Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases."

And that includes that it pleases Him that some creatures (some orders of angels and humans) have a will of their own (otherwise Satan did not rebel God made him do it and thus God is the author of all evil and Adam and Eve did not fall thus invoking the consequence of spiritual death but rather they did as God willed against His own command to NOT do this)


Ephesians 1:11 ........
"In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,


And it was His purpose that after He initiates we must rightly respond which was laid out in the verses Calvin ALWAYS avoided (13 and 14) which is Paul’s summary/conclusion regarding the previous 7 or 8 verses.


Isaiah 45:7 ..........
"I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord, who does all these things."


When a volcano erupts and kills 1,000 people or so and everyone is running about and there is much destruction we call it chaos and judge this event as something evil but it is not. It is simply something natural that God made into the world so that it would function in such a way to optimize the best for life for the maximum number of persons. So why do people always go and rebuild cities at the feet of volcanoes? I cannot figure that one out. Anyway, we may call this event evil, but God would call IT good, because if there were no volcanoes relieving the building pressures within the earth the whole planet would explode and then we all would be dead.


Now next we must look first at the context of Isaiah 45:7 and then clarify a couple of the words. The chapter is speaking about the saving and restoration of Israel. Jeremiah 25 tells us about the coming 70 year captivity under Babylon. One year for each of the 70 Sabbath years they ignored during the 490 years of idolatrous Kings. Isaiah here alludes to this captivity and then tells us that when the time was right, the Lord would raise up Cyrus the Persian (even naming him 200 years before he was born) to rescue them and send them back to the land. Verses 7-9 is actually describing the fact that the Lord is going to engineer all the circumstances from inviting Nebuchadnezzar to his defeat under Cyrus and all for His purpose (Isaiah 45:13).


Now for the words. The word the used for "create" in Isaiah’s passage is not translated correctly. Create is "bara" (to call forth from nothingness) and this word is "yatzar" or "make" (to form or give form to) and so is saying that the Lord, from the circumstances and according to the personalities of these people and these two men (hence in His foreknowledge), will bring His final intent to pass. Yes, He works all things together for the good of those who love Him, and He continually had warned them that the wages due for sin is death. For example, if you jump off a skyscraper without a net, will you not plummet into sidewalk splat? Sin, or transgression of the law, is like the consequence of transgressing gravity or any other immutable law. You know you should not do it and lovingly someone has taught you “Thou shalt not jump off the skyscrapper" but in our self will we will not have anyone telling us what to do and we jump anyhoo (the consequence of the fall is in the desire to be lord of our own life we do what is right in our own eyes)! So the children of Israel had transgressed the law (just as immutable as gravity) and their demise was inevitable. Nebi was going crazy to take over the world anyway. Only this time the Lord was not going to intervene, in fact He encourages Nebi to conquer them using those circumstances and conditions which were already present...


Next, the word for “evil” here is actually not speaking of moral or spiritual evil (and most translations bear this out...especially the Masoretic), it is speaking of sorrow and disaster as opposed to shalom or peaceful wellbeing (as you have said “calamity”).


These continuously rebellious idolatrous Israelites would receive the consequence of their willful actions in violation of God's immutable laws. See the warning of love detailed in Deuteronomy 28. So God is not saying He is the originator of evil, He is allowing the disaster that is about to come upon them by simply not doing anything to stop it. He will not look upon them, after all this time (many centuries), with mercy and grace. In Jeremiah, He tells the prophet not to even pray for this people He will not listen. He has given them grace on top of grace over and over and they mock His effort to bless and take all the glory and live a life of debauchery....this is "the arm of the Lord" you do not want to experience. But in the end (again in His foreknowledge) this will cause them to return unto Him and seek Him, and then, He will save them. So it is not that He created "evil" because evil is not a thing in and of itself, it is simply the absence of all good (ultimately Him), just as cold does not really exist but as the absence of heat and darkness the absence of light.


If evil is God’s will and then He commands us to be against it and overcome it, by logical extension God would be commanding us to be opposed to Him and violate His will (a self -negating scenario for God is a logical absurdity).

God alone saves (no one but God has this power or ability, the option is totally His to save whoever He wants to save OWING NO ONE ANYTHING FOR ALL HAVE SINNED…it is totally by grace)…He has Sovereignly determined to require the appropriate response on man’s part to be the criteria (though faith...John 1:12)…God always initiates...all commands to turn, believe, repent, accept, receive, etc., are in the imperative mood which means the capability to do so exists...God speaks or motivates in the spirit and then God requires this of man’s free will just as Augustine taught, but John Calvin ignored. He has sovereignly determined this to be His way with and for mankind.

In His love

Paul
 
Major

Psalm 115:3 .........
"Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases."

And that includes that it pleases Him that some creatures (some orders of angels and humans) have a will of their own (otherwise Satan did not rebel God made him do it and thus God is the author of all evil and Adam and Eve did not fall thus invoking the consequence of spiritual death but rather they did as God willed against His own command to NOT do this)


Ephesians 1:11 ........
"In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,


And it was His purpose that after He initiates we must rightly respond which was laid out in the verses Calvin ALWAYS avoided (13 and 14) which is Paul’s summary/conclusion regarding the previous 7 or 8 verses.


Isaiah 45:7 ..........
"I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord, who does all these things."


When a volcano erupts and kills 1,000 people or so and everyone is running about and there is much destruction we call it chaos and judge this event as something evil but it is not. It is simply something natural that God made into the world so that it would function in such a way to optimize the best for life for the maximum number of persons. So why do people always go and rebuild cities at the feet of volcanoes? I cannot figure that one out. Anyway, we may call this event evil, but God would call IT good, because if there were no volcanoes relieving the building pressures within the earth the whole planet would explode and then we all would be dead.


Now next we must look first at the context of Isaiah 45:7 and then clarify a couple of the words. The chapter is speaking about the saving and restoration of Israel. Jeremiah 25 tells us about the coming 70 year captivity under Babylon. One year for each of the 70 Sabbath years they ignored during the 490 years of idolatrous Kings. Isaiah here alludes to this captivity and then tells us that when the time was right, the Lord would raise up Cyrus the Persian (even naming him 200 years before he was born) to rescue them and send them back to the land. Verses 7-9 is actually describing the fact that the Lord is going to engineer all the circumstances from inviting Nebuchadnezzar to his defeat under Cyrus and all for His purpose (Isaiah 45:13).


Now for the words. The word the used for "create" in Isaiah’s passage is not translated correctly. Create is "bara" (to call forth from nothingness) and this word is "yatzar" or "make" (to form or give form to) and so is saying that the Lord, from the circumstances and according to the personalities of these people and these two men (hence in His foreknowledge), will bring His final intent to pass. Yes, He works all things together for the good of those who love Him, and He continually had warned them that the wages due for sin is death. For example, if you jump off a skyscraper without a net, will you not plummet into sidewalk splat? Sin, or transgression of the law, is like the consequence of transgressing gravity or any other immutable law. You know you should not do it and lovingly someone has taught you “Thou shalt not jump off the skyscrapper" but in our self will we will not have anyone telling us what to do and we jump anyhoo (the consequence of the fall is in the desire to be lord of our own life we do what is right in our own eyes)! So the children of Israel had transgressed the law (just as immutable as gravity) and their demise was inevitable. Nebi was going crazy to take over the world anyway. Only this time the Lord was not going to intervene, in fact He encourages Nebi to conquer them using those circumstances and conditions which were already present...


Next, the word for “evil” here is actually not speaking of moral or spiritual evil (and most translations bear this out...especially the Masoretic), it is speaking of sorrow and disaster as opposed to shalom or peaceful wellbeing (as you have said “calamity”).


These continuously rebellious idolatrous Israelites would receive the consequence of their willful actions in violation of God's immutable laws. See the warning of love detailed in Deuteronomy 28. So God is not saying He is the originator of evil, He is allowing the disaster that is about to come upon them by simply not doing anything to stop it. He will not look upon them, after all this time (many centuries), with mercy and grace. In Jeremiah, He tells the prophet not to even pray for this people He will not listen. He has given them grace on top of grace over and over and they mock His effort to bless and take all the glory and live a life of debauchery....this is "the arm of the Lord" you do not want to experience. But in the end (again in His foreknowledge) this will cause them to return unto Him and seek Him, and then, He will save them. So it is not that He created "evil" because evil is not a thing in and of itself, it is simply the absence of all good (ultimately Him), just as cold does not really exist but as the absence of heat and darkness the absence of light.


If evil is God’s will and then He commands us to be against it and overcome it, by logical extension God would be commanding us to be opposed to Him and violate His will (a self -negating scenario for God is a logical absurdity).

God alone saves (no one but God has this power or ability, the option is totally His to save whoever He wants to save OWING NO ONE ANYTHING FOR ALL HAVE SINNED…it is totally by grace)…He has Sovereignly determined to require the appropriate response on man’s part to be the criteria (though faith...John 1:12)…God always initiates...all commands to turn, believe, repent, accept, receive, etc., are in the imperative mood which means the capability to do so exists...God speaks or motivates in the spirit and then God requires this of man’s free will just as Augustine taught, but John Calvin ignored. He has sovereignly determined this to be His way with and for mankind.

In His love

Paul
I think that you are saying that God in in control of all things which is His "Sovereign will". If so then I agree with you.

When a volcano erupts and kills 1000 people living at its base, my 1st thought is........not God's judgment on those people or even His predetermined will of know the event would take place. My 1st thought is.........Hoe stupid those people were!!!!!!!

The thought of living at the base of a fire breathing mountain never ever has crossed my mind in any way. God is not only Sovereign, He gave us a brain to work things out and reason a response.

It would be like building a house 100 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. Do we not understand that sooner or later a Hurricane is going to destroy it????

Same with living close to the San Andrus Fault. Not If but when an earthquake hits, why run around and get upset. You know it was coming.
 
I do because God is what gets me up in the morning( when I could have died in my sleep) and he sustains my life. :)

Ita very comforting knowing God is in control
 
God ultimately is control of everything yes, but his ways of allowing sin, evil, rebellion is not his perfect will but permissable will. There are 2 extremes in the Grace category, Arminianism & Calvinism. I choose 2 see that God's Sovereignty for salvation & man's responsibility are Twin Truths along the same tracks and how they can both be true is a Mystery.

But other parts of scripture are much clearer such as Prophecy. All the Prophecies of Israel coming as a Nation to Jesus, prophecies of the defeat of the anti-christ & satan, the great tribulation, the 1000 year reign of Jesus, the new heavens & new earth, the judgement throne, the casting into the lake of fire unbelievers and the demons/satan, all these things are under God's control and timing. And none of this or anything happens because of what we say, no my friends it will happen because he has ordained all things, Isaiah 46:10, Daniel 4:35, Matt. 10:29, Acts 17:26
 
Moderators Warning.
Arminianism & Calvinism is something that is not permitted to be talked
about in the open forum.

Please Review and Familiarize Your Self with these topics Here !!
Thank You
 
Moderators Warning.
Arminianism & Calvinism is something that is not permitted to be talked
about in the open forum.

Please Review and Familiarize Your Self with these topics Here !!
Thank You
No problem. Please notice I did not take a position on either one, did not try to attack or defend either one. Just mentioned them as part of the discussion.
 
See Pm that I sent thank you.
The Fact that You Did Not Push Either Or
Does not matter !!
Blessings
Ok, not a problem. But it seems we are allowed to talk about Free Will & Predestination which are cousins so I will just stick with what you allow. Since both Predestination and the Will of Man are both in the Bible and we cannot seem to reconcile how they both can be true it is a Mystery in the work of His Salvation of us. But his ultimate plans for mankind in general is not a Mystery and all that has been prophesied to the end of Revelation is going to come to pass, so God is in Control of all things.
 
God ultimately is control of everything yes, but his ways of allowing sin, evil, rebellion is not his perfect will but permissable will. There are 2 extremes in the Grace category, Arminianism & Calvinism. I choose 2 see that God's Sovereignty for salvation & man's responsibility are Twin Truths along the same tracks and how they can both be true is a Mystery.

But other parts of scripture are much clearer such as Prophecy. All the Prophecies of Israel coming as a Nation to Jesus, prophecies of the defeat of the anti-christ & satan, the great tribulation, the 1000 year reign of Jesus, the new heavens & new earth, the judgement throne, the casting into the lake of fire unbelievers and the demons/satan, all these things are under God's control and timing. And none of this or anything happens because of what we say, no my friends it will happen because he has ordained all things, Isaiah 46:10, Daniel 4:35, Matt. 10:29, Acts 17:26

Good stuff! I agree with you.

Lamentations 3:37-38.....
“Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?” .

Theologian J.I. Packer defines providence as ..........
“the unceasing activity of the Creator whereby, in overflowing bounty and goodwill, He upholds His creatures in ordered existence, guides and governs all events, circumstances, and free acts of angels and men, and directs everything to its appointed goal, for His own glory.”
 
Ok, not a problem. But it seems we are allowed to talk about Free Will & Predestination which are cousins so I will just stick with what you allow. Since both Predestination and the Will of Man are both in the Bible and we cannot seem to reconcile how they both can be true it is a Mystery in the work of His Salvation of us. But his ultimate plans for mankind in general is not a Mystery and all that has been prophesied to the end of Revelation is going to come to pass, so God is in Control of all things.

And you would be correct!
 
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