Is our life-span fixed?

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[robbyyoung]

Hi dizerner,

That's a really difficult and complex question, Robby.

In short I think God knows all things, thus in creating he knows bad things will happen, but I cannot accept the Calivinstic idea that everything happens exactly as God desires.

I'm getting a little off track here, but I'll respond briefly to your concerns. Why? Because of your inflammatory remarks of "blasphemy". Why other Christians keep making every speculation, of ambiguity, a soteriology issue is beyond me. Blasphemy, Really?

Anyway, let's take a look at Satan. John 8:44 (NASB) "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

dizerner, you said, "but I cannot accept the Calivinstic idea that everything happens exactly as God desires." Well then explain Satan's nature? Are you going to tell all of us that this wasn't God's desire after knowing what "Nature" He was giving Satan? I could easily spout off how blasphemous it would be for anybody to question God's motives in creating Satan. But I won't, because we can only speculate on the ambiguity of the matter, and that doesn't threaten anyone's salvation.

This necessarily means some things are out of God's direct control.

This doesn't "necessarily" imply no such thing. Nothing is outside The Father's control. He knows all things and that puts Him in TOTAL CONTROL.

Saying that God wanted every evil thing to happen is atrocious, even if him letting those evils happen is irreconcilably paradoxical to a good nature.

"A good nature"? God tells us He alone afflicts, pours out wrath, takes vengeance, etc.. on our behalf. We are NOT good enough to do such things because WE ARE NOT The Creator. We have no idea why everything must happen they way they do. We are simply to OBEY and trust God as He performs His work in His creation.

Your, "atrocious", comment is directly pointed at God. If someone was to believe God can only be just by the desires SOME evil things, God and Man IS NOT atrocious. However, if someone was to believe God can be just by the desire of ALL evil things, God and Man is now atrocious and God is UNJUST by default. What's the difference between God, being atrocious, wanting some evil things to happen verses all? Are you implying God cannot be just in all things, only SOME?

There is no Biblical indication that God actually wanted or decreed Adam to sin, in fact his first question to Adam was did you eat, heavily implying autonomy. God created Satan to worship him and never at any point in time was God the author of evil, nor did he desire evil. To say so, is to me, blasphemous.

You're pretty much wrong on every account here!

You said, "There is no Biblical indication that God actually wanted or decreed Adam to sin..." You are dead wrong! God said Yeshua was the Lamb slain BEFORE the foundation of the world. This is an insurance policy in which God already prepared for. God desired and wanted a people for HIMSELF. Apparently, this was THE ONLY way it could happen or else why in the world, before any creative work, would God only prepare The Lamb ahead of time?

You said, "God created Satan to worship him and never at any point in time was God the author of evil, nor did he desire evil." You are dead wrong AGAIN! What does the Prophet Isaiah say, 45:7 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." Some people like to use the word, "Calamity", to try a soften what is clearly observable. Nevertheless, it WILL NOT work, for the same Hebrew word, רַע (ra) is used throughout scripture indicating "bad intensions" although righteously by God.

Take a look at Genesis 2:9, "And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil." And you say God is not the author of EVIL? Really? You can even get pass the first two chapters of Genesis before this question is answered. Yes, the evil God creates stands ever ready to execute righteous justice against sin (the guilty).

God executes evil righteously, for He IS NOT guilty of anything. Man executes evil, being unrighteous and guilty of all things! Therefore, God decrees, vengeance is mine, I will repay says The Lord!

I suggest that you start "unpacking" whatever it is you have to say on the matter.

God Bless.





This would take pages and pages to unpack.[/quote]

[TheEditor]

Perhaps "blasphemy" isn't the correct word, but I hear what Dizerner is saying (btw, Jesus said every form of blasphemy would be forgiven except one, Robby, so you're in the clear ). I would have chosen the words shameful, derogatory, or ignominious against the character of God, however. How could one not? How could one believe God delights in using humans as happless and dim-witted pawns in the elaborately macabre and Kafkasque chess-game we call "life" and not be the least bit troubled by the notion?

Regards, Brenden.

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[robbyyoung]

Perhaps "blasphemy" isn't the correct word, but I hear what Dizerner is saying (btw, Jesus said every form of blasphemy would be forgiven except one, Robby, so you're in the clear ). I would have chosen the words shameful, derogatory, or ignominious against the character of God, however. How could one not? How could one believe God delights in using humans as happless and dim-witted pawns in the elaborately macabre and Kafkasque chess-game we call "life" and not be the least bit troubled by the notion?

Regards, Brenden.

Hi Brenden,

That's right, you have no power over God. You want to describe yourself as such, so be it. Deal with the scriptures, your accusations are not against me, LOL! Nevertheless, man HATES to be vulnerable and exposed to God. Well too bad! It is what it is, you don't like it, of course, but it doesn't make these and other verses magically go away to suit your emotions.

So either deal with the scriptures or humbly submit to speculation on your part and let God be God.

LOL! Of course you hear what diizerner is saying, what a surprise!

God Bless.

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[TheEditor]

Keil and Delitzsch comments on the Isaiah passage as follows:

"In Isa_45:7 we are led by the context to understand by darkness and evil the penal judgments, through which light and peace, or salvation, break forth for the people of God and the nations generally. But as the prophecy concerning Cyrus closes with this self-assertion of Jehovah, it is unquestionably a natural supposition that there is also a contrast implied to the dualistic system of Zarathustra, which divided the one nature of the Deity into two opposing powers (see Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, p. 135). The declaration is so bold, that Marcion appealed to this passage as a proof that the God of the Old Testament was a different being from the God of the New, and not the God of goodness only. The Valentinians and other gnostics also regarded the words “There is no God beside me” in Isaiah, as deceptive words of the Demiurugs. The early church met them with Tertullian's reply, “de his creator profitetur malis quae congruunt judici,” and also made use of this self-attestation of the God of revelation as a weapon with which to attack Manicheesism. The meaning of the words is not exhausted by those who content themselves with the assertion, that by the evil (or darkness) we are not to understand the evil of guilt (malum culpae), but the evil of punishment (malum paenae). Undoubtedly, evil as an act is not the direct working of God, but the spontaneous work of a creature endowed with freedom. At the same time, evil, as well as good, has in this sense its origin in God - that He combines within Himself the first principles of love and wrath, the possibility of evil, the self-punishment of evil, and therefore the consciousness of guilt as well as the evil of punishment in the broadest sense. When the apostle celebrates the glory of free grace in Rom_9:11., he stands on that giddy height, to which few are able to follow him without falling headlong into the false conclusions of a decretum absolutum, and the denial of all creaturely freedom."

Surely you are aware that when the Hebrews wrote of God "causing" something, it could mean he merely "refrained" from stopping it?

The passage in Genesis is being made too much of. "Being like God knowing good and evil" merely expresses man becoming the moral determiner of "good and evil"; making decisions about what is and what is not good or evil is what it meant to "be like God". The footnote in my copy of the Jerusalem Bible on this passage in Genesis reads:

"It is the power of deciding for himself what is good and what is evil and of acting accordingly, a claim to complete moral independence by which man refuses to recognise his status as a created being. The first sin was an attack on God’s sovereignty, a sin of pride."

Regards, Brenden.

[robbyyoung]

Fair point, and I would not question God's motives. After all he freely allowed Satan to turn evil,

Nonsense! Satan didn't TURN evil, HE was created evil, it was his nature. What part of this are you struggling with?

This is not talking about the beginning of Satan's creation, but the beginning of Satan being a father to human beings. And the first "sonship" was Cain, and first manifestation of Satan's attributes was the murder of Abel. Satan did not murder anyone as an angel in heaven, it says he deceived 1/3 of angels into committing treason against God. Satan was created as the lead worship angel and it says he was flawless and walked among the coals of God until the day iniquity was found in him. The wording "until iniquity was found in him" both clearly designates him as the source of evil, and separates any desire or initiation from God to produce this evil.

Again, speculative at best. Isaiah 14:12 and Ezekiel 28 are contextually talking about a MAN, an earthly ruler of the time. Though the language may be difficult grasp conclusively, context would have the original audience dismissed of some angelic being.

Just as God made everything "very good" in the beginning, so he did in the angelic kingdom. Just as the iniquity was found "in" Satan, so it was found "in" Adam. And this iniquity spread in evil and judgment to enormous degrees.

Was the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, "very good"? Did or did not God create evil? Is evil "a god" and created itself? If not, who created it? The scriptures says, God did! Now is evil sin? Well that depends on who is guilty of transgression and that would be The Creature.

God Bless.

[dizerner]

[user account removed]