My only problem with the majority of this, is always coming back to God knowing everything. He is all-knowing, all-powerful, knows the fate of each human being, etc. ...So... why continue with all this pretense? If God has truly given us free will, then I don't believe He can know the fates of all of us before it actually happens. Unless we mean the ultimate fate, where it's going to be Him deciding where we go anyway, no matter what path we went down in life. So I just don't get this whole 'decision' thing, where God is letting us decide to repent and follow him or not, if He ultimately already knows our decision. ...Unless God is just sitting back, and watching us make fools of ourselves. ;P (...I don't mean any offense by that, but it just kind of gave me an image of God sitting on the throne and watching us, as if we were a show that he's already watched a million times before, and knows the outcome already. ;P)

Well, with so many different translations of the Bible, and how many writers of the Bible that God had to work through, I can sort of understand why there would be so many different opinions about God. Such as how in some versus it says that God is loving and forgiving, and then in others it might say something like how vengeful and angry He is. It might depend upon the person relaying the events/experience. Because, obviously, we all have different opinions about everything. ;P



I agree with this exactly. When you view something as a child, you do not see the whole truth of what something/someone/an event is. You just base all of your feelings on trust, love, fear, etc. The most basic of instincts, I think. It's kind of like how as a child, your Father can do no wrong. Or you are just oblivious to all of it. Then, when you get older, you start seeing more and realize that he's verbally assaulting, cheats on your Mother, etc., etc., and it's really disheartening and eye-opening to come to the truth about whom you've grown up to love and adore. ...And of course not saying that God does any of this. ;P Just speaking in metaphorical terms. To view something as a child, you must have your heart open first and foremost, and your mind closed to all doubts, and just believe/have faith unquestioningly. Which is something a lot of people cannot do.

And... I am not even going to open up the free will debate again.

I do like it though that even though people aren't seeing eye to eye on a lot of things, it is still really nice and civil on here.

Sean,

I think we need to keep perspective in mind.

God is dealing with all of humanity, past, present, and future. I accept what Scripture says, which is that He loves each of us. But I also understand that He loves ALL of us, and so although the punishment to specific individuals may be seen as harsh from our perspective, from the perspective of a being who has a specific plan for humanity, the punishment for any particular individual is not as important.

... Having said that, I would also point out that in those instances where God did punish with death, the people were made aware that their actions were going to be dealt with extreme consequences, and they had time to repent but DECIDED not to.

W My only problem with the majority of this, is always coming back to God knowing everything. He is all-knowing, all-powerful, knows the fate of each human being, etc. ...So... why continue with all this pretense? If God has truly given us free will, then I don't believe He can know the fates of all of us before it actually happens. Unless we mean the ultimate fate, where it's going to be Him deciding where we go anyway, no matter what path we went down in life. So I just don't get this whole 'decision' thing, where God is letting us decide to repent and follow him or not, if He ultimately already knows our decision. ...Unless God is just sitting back, and watching us make fools of ourselves. ;P (...I don't mean any offense by that, but it just kind of gave me an image of God sitting on the throne and watching us, as if we were a show that he's already watched a million times before, and knows the outcome already. ;P)

L If God is omniscient then every human being was already judged before the Creation was enacted.

Every decision God makes was made at the beginning of God.

God had an instant of activity, then an eternity of mindless boredom. Is it any wonder some might think Him insane?

If Jesus died for the sins of all people, then why does it matter how we act now? If we're all supposed to be forgiven because he died, then theoretically couldn't we do whatever we wanted and still get off the hook?

This is my view of the whole free-will/predetermination question: Think of God as the ultimate programmer and the universe as the program. A programmer, a perfect programmer, knows exactly what his program will do, even if there are countless of variables which can combine in infinite ways. The programmer will know all of those possibilities, he will have perfect foreknowledge of anything which can happen in his program because he wrote all of the code and only what he wrote can happen. The programmer doesn't have to control every step of his program in order to insure certain things do and certain things don't happen.

We are all stuck in the machine hmm? Well I challenge Ripley to a game of Tron style Jai alai.