Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: bnr-fos!bnr-public!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: None should perish (was Re: Williamson's Regulative Principle) Message-ID: Date: 19 Jul 89 06:18:30 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 135 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article fibercom!lab@uunet.uu.net (Lance Beckner) writes: >implies that God's will is *always* done. I read the Bible, and this is >just not true. > >Was it God's will that Adam and Eve disobey? >Was it God's will that the human race be tainted with sin? >Was it God's will that Cain kill Abel? >Was it God's will that Israel would turn their back on the LORD over and over >again to worship false gods? >Is it God's will that I, a child of God, sin? > >The answer to all of these questions is a resounding "NO". Yes, I believe that God's will is always done. I believe that the answer to each and every one of your questions is a resounding YES and not no. While I shall not deal with each and every one of your questions, unless you really want me to, I shall deal with a couple of them to illustrate what I am saying. Let's take perhaps the simplest of your questions first. It was most definitely God's will that Israel reject Him over and over again. If they had not finally rejected Him altogether then Jesus would never have been crucified and salvation would not have been able to come to anyone. Acts 2:23 tells us "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:". Through the nation of Israel God has also shown us that even though He deals very initmately with a huge bunch of people, all of them (and that includes each one of us) will still insist on rejecting Him unless He gives them the ability to believe. In the wilderness, any Israelite could have looked out of his tent door and seen either the cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night and remembered that the very presence of God Himself was right there. Every day when collecting his ration of mannah he was presented with concrete evidence that God was providing for his needs. They needed only look at moses's veiled face to recall that the reflection of the glory of God shone from it and that it was so bright that they could not bear to look at it. They had all the plagues in Egypt and the dividing of the Red Sea to remind them of His power. Yet, with all this plus a lot of other things which I have not mentioned here, Hebrews 3:19 tells us "So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.". Jesus confirms this lesson when He tells us in John 6:44 that "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.". You ask if it is God's will that those whom He has saved still sin while in this phase of their lives. Again, I believe that the answer is yes. He teaches that we have both a body and a soul, and that it is only our souls that get resurrected at the time that salvation is received; we are not to receive our resurrected bodies until the last day. It is clearly His will that, although we now have a sinless soul, we retain our sinful bodies for the time being. I see two reasons for this. God teaches that we will receive substantially more than mere sinless bodies; they will be glorified spiritual bodies designed for inhabiting and compatible with the new heaven and the new earth. Within such a body we would be unable to remain here on this earth and spread the Gospel message to those who are not yet saved. He has also done things this way so that, while amongst the unsaved, we will be restrained from falling into the temptation of letting our perfection get to our heads, i.e. constantly acting like we are better than they are. An extreme case of this is when God intentionally caused Paul to endure some sort of suffering for the rest of his life. After having given him a glimpse of heaven, 2 Corinthians 12:7 tells us "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.". I believe that a lot of confusion arises because there is a tendancy to confuse the will of God with respect to how He commands us to live with the will of God with respect to those sins which He allows to occur. Through allowing sin to enter into His creation He created for Himself a marvelous forum in which to show all of His glory, love, compassion, mercy, etc. We must remember that God actually hates the people who sin. There is a common belief that God hates the sin yet loves the sinner. This is not true at all. Psalm 5:5 tells us "The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.". Psalm 11:5 tells us "The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.". Proverbs 6:16-19 tells us "These six {things} doth the LORD hate: yea, seven {are} an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness {that} speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.". Note that the preceding Scripture does not say that God hates pride, lying, killing, etc.; it tells us that God hates the tongue, the hands, the feet, etc. that do all of these bad things. The final entry in the list makes it very clear; we are told that God hates HE that soweth discord among brethren. For those who do not want to believe that there are those whom God hates, I would ask them to read Malachi 1:3 where we are told rather blatently that although God loved Jacob He hated Esau. Just to make sure that we wouldn't miss this as a significant verse, it is quoted in Romans 9:13. With all of this hatred toward the sinners themselves, the way in which He has chosen to show His love for those whom He chose to save is even more remarkable and worthy of continual and fervent praise. The Scriptures teach that all those whom God loves will be saved. Romans 8:38-39 tells us "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.". We know, therefore, that the ones who shall not be saved are the ones whom God has not chosen to love. We know that He hated Esau. We know that He must have hated most of the pharisees because we are told that they committed the one sin that shall never be forgiven, i.e. blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, by claiming that Jesus got His power from Satan. We know that Judas Iscariot is not saved. These few real examples tell us that in no way will each and every single person be saved; in so doing, they also tell us that there are most definitely those whom God hates. When John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world we must be careful to make sure that we do not read into this that God so loved all the people in the world. There is abundant evidence that He loves His creation, but there is ample evidence that He does not love all of its members. In response to all the preaching by the apostles on and after Penticost we are told that God did not bring all the hearers to salvation. The last half of Acts 2:47 tells us "the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.". Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014 856 Grenon Avenue Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 6G3 [I'm sort of surprised to see some of these comments. The traditional view by those who believe in predestination is that the corruption of sin extends to body and soul equally. Indeed spiritual sins such as pride are probably more serious than those caused by bodily appetites. I'll let those who believe in the limited atonement comment in more detail on the rest of this message. However it's my impression that even the most extreme believers in predestination considered that God's purposes were ultimately merciful. If that's your understanding, it doesn't come througb as clearly as it might. --clh]