Do you believe that God always uses His ability of foreknowledge to know what satan or man is going to do?
Do you believe that satan must ask God's permission to do evil? If so just how would satan go about asking God, seeing he no longer has access to the Throne of God?
Is that not what the whole thread is about? Does God cause evil? Do we need evil to separate good?
Is there a middle road somewhere?
If God had foreknowledge of everything. Star Trek version (God lives outside of time, saw you grow up live your life and die.) Then by default God would be responsible just having the foreknowledge. His foreknowledge would not be limited in any way, so by putting the spirit in man on that day, knowing the man was destined for hell, would not be foreknowledge but election or causing something.
God just does not drop people on the planet, then becomes a fortune teller as some believe. Each person has a plan, a purpose, is fearfully and wonderfully made.
Any foreknowledge from God would have, has to start at some point. The point of the plan when He made you. That makes election sure and foreknowledge a dumb idea. To say God just foreknows things, means God just closes his eyes and drops people on the planet wishing for the best.
Election has to be right!!! The problem is we have scriptures in our way!!!
Jeremiah 32:35
And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.
Gen 18:20 And
the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;
Gen 18:21 I will go down now,
and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not,
I will know.
Pure election and foreknowledge have some major scriptural problems. God never planed to destroy Sodom, but the cry of their sin comes to heaven. God knows something spiritually. God has to personally go and look to see if what He is hearing, matches the sins being committed. He says after he looks, then He will know. That shows no foreknowledge or election.
It means God has to go check it out.
Gen 22:12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him:
for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
How does God know that Abraham is with him until the end? It was not by foreknowledge or Election. God looks at the heart, and knows by the heart if a man has it in Him to have faith. God searches for these hearts, not makes them, not foreknows them.
Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth
to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing:
therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
Who has to choose here? Jesus said every idle word we speak, bring evil treasure in or good treasure is recorded. Actions and Words denote choices. God said we choose, which one and the choice is recorded. If God foreknows then God does not need to record, if God elects then God does not even ask one to choose.
There is a big difference to what God declared to the World in His word and what God said to each person. Even Peter who experienced miracles and heard the voice of God said......... We have a more sure word of prophecy!!! The word is something God declared, and it will happen. Each person, has a plan and a choice.
God told Eli that His family would be of the royal priesthood forever. That is personal, but all personal things God says is conditional. Eli did not honor God, so God said far be it from me, those that will not honor me, I will not honor.
Jesus followed the perfect plan of God. Jesus stayed on the Path that God declared to the end. On God's path, everything is planed out, everything is waiting around the corner. A donkey shows up at the right exact time in the right place for Jesus because the Donkey was spoken of long ago to be there.
If Jesus just did something else that day, the Donkey would have been there but Jesus would never have known it. The path is declared, the plan for each man in place, it's good things, not evil things.
If you stay on God's path, God could tell you what you will be doing 20 years from now. You get off that path, your own your own, it is darkness and people stumble into things they have no idea why.
Mike.