“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” (Jeremiah 1:5)
And of course. Paul said everything that exists is both of and from God.
In the Bible, there were very few humans whom God foreordained to carry out certain roles within his stated purpose, as I have mentioned before.....but that doesn't mean that God chooses to know all about every human who has ever lived.
I heard it illustrated this way....."a locksmith knows how to unlock every lock....but that doesn't mean that he has to unlock every lock, just to prove he can".....I can see why God has just allowed humans to multiply....and what will be will be, as free willed creatures. They would soon show him what kind of people they were and he would judge them by the choices they made, not by any pre-destination.
All the many prophetic passages in the bible are there to tell us God predestined everything prophesied.
Prophesy only pertains to the doing of God's will as it fits within his purpose to bring his Christ into the world and to redeem mankind and then to apply the rule of his Kingdom to bring us back all that we lost in Eden. God has predetermined only what pertains to those things...nothing else.
Does that make him a monster?
No, God can never be a monster. He can be God though and as the Creator is free to determine what his own justice demands.
Or was that a question more apt to be asked in Genesis. Or all those passages in all those OT books that talk about God killing or sending death to those whom he chose to kill for his own reasons?
When the fallen world is a creation of God.
The fallen world is not God's creation...it is satan's creation with the help of his willing minions, both angelic and human.
When pagan nations attacked his people, God responded as those nations would have done themselves, to demonstrate his superiority over their useless gods. All those nations would come to against Israel in the name of their gods, but Israel came to her own defense in the name of Yahweh, who defeated those enemies even when his people were outnumbered. He was no monster.....but was simply god-shaming those enemies and giving them a taste of their own medicine.
When there was sin in heaven before this world existed.
Whoa....where did that come from? Reference please....
And then in the NT we read of a kind and redemptive minded God.
He was the same God because he does not change.....we just see different sides to his personality. And redemption was always the reason to send his Messiah.
And Jesus, who was the word, God, made flesh, portrayed a different attitude entirely. Even changing his former OT law regarding the reciprocal justice described in Exodus 21, Leviticus 24, Deuteronomy 29, Wikipedia.
Since I see nowhere in scripture where Jesus ever claimed to be God, you will have to qualify that statement for me...
Hebrews 1:3-5
"And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become so much better than the angels, to the extent that He has inherited a more excellent name than they." (NASB)
Jesus was the "exact representation" of his God and Father, so how could he present a different God?
A "representation" is not the original......and how does God become better than the angels....or inherit a name more excellent than theirs?
Eye for an eye tooth for a tooth or, Ain takhat ain
Which then leads some to consider in that new light the reference to the Elohim in the OT.
A term derived from the Sumerian culture and that pertained to multiple nature deities. Transformed into a singular reference after the former Babylon captivity of the then polytheist Hebrews, or Jews.
That aligns with no scripture that I know....
Either way, makes for an interesting discussion or debate I think.
Well I guess if one is going to debate scripture, it helps to stick to scripture....
Does he punish them?
Was it by one man that sin entered the world?
How did sin enter but that God put a tree in Eden that was the one and only thing off limits to the first people he created?
If Eden was to be a garden paradise by God's will, why would he put a tree there that was forbidden?
Because free will is the right to choose, even if its the wrong choice you still have the God-given right to make it. But no choice is free from consequences. That tree was God's property. Out of all the trees in the garden, that was the only one he claimed as his own. He had the right to expect his intelligent creatures to respect what belonged to him. What they did was steal from God....something so serious in its implications, that it carried the death penalty. That tree represented God's sovereign right to set the limits of human freedom. To challenge God's Sovereignty was the crime, not just the eating of a piece of fruit.
When, if God intended Eden to be paradise and Adam and Eve to live there eternally he wouldn't have installed a gateway to eviction and separation from him.
That would have been a very short term arrangement. What Jehovah did was to include all of his intelligent creation to experience an object lesson, in the benefits of obedience, verses the detriment of disobedience.
The first rebel was not human, but roped the humans in to his desire for worship....so rebellion was introduced in both realm and the only way to prove the rightfulness of obedience to Jehovah as our Sovereign, was to hand the world over to the rulership of the "god' they had chosen to obey....and the rest, as they say...is history.
Paul tells us that where there is no law there is no sin. Which was created by the creator first and in the beginning ? God's law.Or sin?
And don't forget, long before Eden Lucifer sinned in heaven.
There was a law and they broke it. The penalty was death, which they eventually suffered.
Satan is never called "Lucifer" in the Bible, and there is not a word about satan sinning in heaven before Eden.
That's your question. Presuming you've read the OT what is your answer?
Yes I have studied it quite extensively....
This is I think an interesting undertaking.
Look to find in the OT how many people God killed. Directly or through others acting on his command.
Then look to see how many people we're told were killed by Satan.
Out of those two, who alone has the right over life and death?
Out of those two, who alone can restore any lost life that he chooses?
Out of those two, who alone has justice as the basis for his actions.
When God was warning the people that a flood was coming in Noah's day, was it God's fault that they all perished? Didn't Noah preach to them the whole time that he was constructing the ark? Was there room on board for more humans if necessary? It was a huge structure and the whole top floor was for the humans to reside. How many people can you fit onto modern cruise ships? Are we seeing the same things all over again with Christ's imminent return? (Matthew 24:37-39)
And they're still suffering the consequences. Look at a map of the middle east. Compare the land area of Israel that is the land God promised them.
Gigantic consequences there.
If we think about and act on the direction we want our lives to go and the bible tells us that while we do that it is God who puts us where he wants us, what else is there but to accept but that God, whose word tells us he preplans and executes his will amid his creation, prophecy, is to be believed in that Proverbs passage?
Well, you see, I do not believe in predestination....I believe that God has foreordained things in accord with his purpose, but not the details about how a person will, or will not respond to the Bible's message. That is up to the individuals' free choice.
The Promised Land was pictorial of a much larger part of God's plan for this earth...in his original purpose, mankind were the "fill the earth", not just the garden, so the whole world will become like the garden of Eden, when God's purpose is complete. No heaven or hell...just unending life on beautiful planet Earth.
Who has power over creation? The clay? Or the potter?
At the moment it is the clay, still vainly clinging to the devil's world to get it it out of trouble.....but the Potter has had his great plans all along. Nothing has changed his purpose for mankind or the earth.....because what he starts, he finishes....(Isaiah 55:11)
The first standout problem with that scenario is, after God created everything including people in those six days, he looked at it all and judged it Good
That is because at the end of the sixth day it was...."very good". He was well pleased with his accomplishments and ready to allow 'nature to take its course' so to speak.
Sin did not enter the picture until the beginning of the seventh day......but that is what the seventh day was set aside for.
These were not 24 hour "days", but extended periods of time that may have been thousands or even millions of years long. The Hebrew word translated "day" (yohm) has a range of meanings. It doesn't just mean a 24 hour period. So creation was not the wave of a magician's wand...it was the deliberate crafting of creation over eons of time. The Creator is not constricted by time at all.
There is no declaration (like all the other days) to suggest that the seventh day has ended. I believe that we are still in the seventh day and at the conclusion of it, when God's purpose is back on track, God will again be able to say that "everything is very good".