Proverbs 16:4, Matthew 25:34, Ephesians 1:3-5, Romans 8:7, 1John 5:1, Jude 1,
Well good morning! I'm hoping this was directed to me, and you still wanted to discuss this. If so, let me address your verses for you. No offense to Tong, but he didn't do you a very good service, because the first especially is one place where it might actually be said that scripture flatly states something and I would be simply choosing to believe something else.
So let's start with Proverbs 16:4.
In the Masoretic (the Hebrew OT) it reads as follows: "Jehovah has made all things for His purpose, yea, even the wicked for the Day of evil." Now, for starters, the problem with taking this as saying He created the wicked for damnation is that it flies directly in the face of other passages of scripture if you were to interpret it like that. Scripture also says that "God desires that all men be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth." If He wants all men to be saved, has all things under His control, but yet predestines the majority for damnation, you have a truly strange God on your hands. When it says "God made the wicked," it doesn't mean God made him as such, but that He made him just as He made all other things, giving him the same capacity to do good or evil, only in the wicked man's case he chose evil over good.
Now how do I know this? Because if you look at the Septuagint reading, you get a very different reading that cannot be so nearly misconstrued like the Hebrew can. And keep in mind that when the Hebrew scholars got together to translate the Hebrew into Greek, they were working hard to communicate the
meaning of what the Hebrew was actually saying.
The Septuagint reads as follows: "All the works of the Lord are with righteousness, but the impious is kept for an evil day." You see how different that reads? It means that God intended everything for good because His works are with righteousness, but those who rebel against Him and turn to impiousness instead will be preserved for the day of Judgment. This is perfectly in keeping with the rest of scripture, and why God would that all men be saved but some are not. He's not a crazy God, LoL. He makes sense. And any claims that "we cannot understand Him" are nonsense, and an open door to accepting all sorts of heretical teaching that paints Him out to be a total Scoundrel.
Now, Matthew 25:34 is also worth treating for a second, but this is just saying the same thing as I told you Ephesians 1:3-5 says. "Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" just means that the kingdom was prepared in advance, i.e. from the beginning in the mind of God, for those who would choose to walk in obedience to Him and make Him Lord over their lives. This is why the rest of the passage reads, "for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me." They entered into obedience to Him, unlike the wicked who did not, to whom it was instead said, "Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels: 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me." Their condemnation is based on their actions, not on some arbitrary decision He made from the very beginning to condemn some but save others.
I already treated Ephesians 1, and the other three you cited IMO don't really make much of a case for predestined condemnation as they don't really relate to it, but I agree that on the surface Proverbs 16:4 does make it look like you could say God predestined some for condemnation. Does that help any? Again, I'm sorry if I came on too strong. You have to understand I have dedicated my entire life to God. When faced with the argument that He is potentially what I would consider to be a ghastly and grotesque being who condemned the innocent, every fiber of my being just kinda goes on Red Alert. But I didn't mean to misjudge you if that was not what you were trying to say.