WHAT DO YOU THINK THE FRUIT WAS THAT ADAM AND EVE ATE?

Comment

Comment by albert culmer on July 21, 2012 at 6:18pm

Hi,Rita Thanks for sharpening iron with me. It is making me do a lot of research to learn a lot more about my beliefs. Now, what you said here below, I had to find more answers. Check it out, I think we will both learn a lot more.

foreordain*, he didn't foreordain it, but that doesn't mean He didn't know that evil would occur.

Because God loved Abraham so much, God agreed to check the city for 50 righteous people and not destroy Sodom if He could find 50 good people. Then Abraham bravely spoke again, "

I know that I am but dust and ashes, but let me ask that you not destroy the city if there be 45 righteous people!" God agreed. Then Abraham said, "Please don't be angry with me, Lord; but would you please not destroy the city if there be found 40 righteous people?" God agreed."What about 30 righteous people?" God agreed. "20 good people?" God agreed."10 good?" God agreed. But when the angels entered Sodom, they only found 4 good people, Lot and his wife, and their two daughters.

Historic Christianity teaches that although God foreknows everything he does not foreordain everything. What scriptures does the Watchtower Society use to try to prove that God does not foreknow the future actions of his creation? Let's have a look at them. At the bottom of page 141 of the Reasoning book the Watchtower uses two scriptures to prove that there are instances where God does not know the future. They are Genesis 22:12 and 18:20 & 21. Let's have a look at these scriptures.

Gen 18:20-21 says "And the LORD said, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, "I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know." The Society says that this a case where Jehovah did not know the future. Is it really? This passage is not talking about the future. It is talking about the present. Since the Society agrees with Christianity that Jehovah knows everything that is happening now why did he have to go down to see what was happening in Sodom and Gomorrah? It is not because he was ignorant about the present, rather that he takes personal action in respect to mankind's sin. In any respect this is certainly not a scripture that shows that Jehovah does not know the future.

The second passage is Genesis 22:12. With this passage the Society tries to show that Jehovah could not read Abraham's heart about his commitment to obey God until he lifted the knife to kill Isaac. Since the Society agrees with historic Christianity that God knows the hearts of all mankind, he had to know Abraham's heart all along and knew that he was set on obeying him by killing Isaac.

In spite of this God allowed it to progress in order to record Abraham's actions. Why did he do this? Jehovah allowed Abraham to reach the point of killing his son because even though he already knew Abraham's heart and saw his faith,

we are the ones who could not read Abraham's heart and needed to see Abraham's actions to see his faith. When God said "Now I know.." he didn't mean that he didn't know the moment before for he is God.

And the choice of the individual. The complaint implies that there is an action by God upon a person that negates His freedom to choose. It would be up to the complainer to establish some logical connection between what God knows what will happen and the mind of the one who makes a choice so that the mind of the person making the choice no longer is making a choice. It seems that the critics are saying that the choice-maker is affected by God's knowledge to such an extent that his freedom is lost. If that is the case, then can they prove this logically? If not, then how can they maintain their position?

Blessings.  Love Your Brother In Christ Ace.

Comment by Rita Cullimore on July 20, 2012 at 4:57am

Ace...

Through God allowing and foreordaining evil, 

I agree with your post up until the above comment. By my understanding of the word *foreordain*, he didn't foreordain it, but that doesn't mean He didn't know that evil would occur. It doesn't mean He didn't know us and what sins we would commit and ultimately turn away from, or... not!

Blessings.....

Rita

Comment by albert culmer on July 19, 2012 at 7:08pm

Hi,Rita it is always good to sharpen Iron. And I did not say that man does not have a choice. It's good that we can disagree.

In Christ’s death and resurrection we see God doing what He’d planned from before the foundation of the Earth.

What was it that God knew before He created the earth? It is true that Revelation 13:8 in the Greek can be read as referring to ‘the book written before the foundation of the world’, rather than as referring to the Lamb. However, this reading still means that God knew whose names would be in His book (or possibly whose names would not be in His book, which by difference amounts to the same result). That is, that God knew before the foundation of the world who would be saved.

Did God know that Adam would sin before He created him?

This showes that God new us be for we was born. God also knows what you will say, be for you say it. He also knows what you are going to do, be for you do it.

Jeremiah 1:55

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, andI ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Revelation:8

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty

The

book of Revelation expounds on the Tree of Life in two places: To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God. (Revelation 2:7)

· Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may

enter through the gates into [New Jerusalem]. (Revelation 22:14)

The book of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world’. (Revelation 13:8)

According to the principle of interpreting Scripture by Scripture, these verses all point to the truth that Christ’s death and resurrection was eternally planned in the mind of God (by which I mean the Triune God, i.e. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

If God is all knowing and he knows our future, then how is that free will?

God knows the future of what the free-will creatures choose. Free will does not stop becoming free because God knows what will happen. For example, I know that my child will choose to eat chocolate cake over a bowl full of stinking dead mice. If I were to set them both before my child, it is safe to say she will not eat the dead mice. Knowing this is not taking away the freedom of my child since she is freely choosing one over the other. Likewise, for God to know what a person will choose does not mean that the person has no freedom to make the choice. It simply means that God knows what the person will choose. This is necessarily so since God knows all things (1 John 3:20). Besides, if a person were to choose A instead of C, then that is what God would have known would happen.

Furthermore, if God knows all things and knows what we are going to choose, then by definition, we are still making the choice; after all, the argument says that God knows what "we are going to choose". If we are going to "choose something", then we really are making the choice -- otherwise it wouldn't be logical to assert that God knows what we are going to choose. Choice implies the ability to decide between different options. Again, by definition if God is knowing what we are going to choose, then He knows what we are going to choose between options... otherwise we are not choosing anything and the statement is illogical.

Back to the bowl of dead mice. The father, however, is not omniscient where God is. But does this difference negate the analogy? Not at all. Knowing what a person will do still does not force them or limit them to doing what is known. Some people assert that if God knows what we are going to do, then we don't have "real" freedom. They try to state logically that God's foreknowledge of an event somehow limits the event and the choice of the individual. The complaint implies that there is an action by God upon a person that negates His freedom to choose. It would be up to the complainer to establish some logical connection between what God knows what will happen and the mind of the one who makes a choice so that the mind of the person making the choice no longer is making a choice. It seems that the critics are saying that the choice-maker is affected by God's knowledge to such an extent that his freedom is lost. If that is the case, then can they prove this logically? If not, then how can they maintain their position?

God's knowing what we will choose is a function of His omnipresence since He is in all places all the time. If He were not, He would not know what choices we were freely going to make. To deny that God is all-knowing, even of the choices we make, is to deny His omnipresence and reduce God's nature to something more like ourselves, which would be a mistake.

Nevertheless, some people try and claim that God does not know what we will freely choose. But, this cannot be since it would violate the biblical teaching that God knows all things.

Furthermore, this idea of God's knowledge and peoples' freedom is ultimately an unanswerable issue since it involves us working in time and God is outside of time. Our question deals with a situation from a perspective inside of time where God is outside of time. By default, our questions and answers concerning this issue cannot be complete. Past, present, and future are concepts and realities created for us, not for God.

Comment by Rita Cullimore on July 19, 2012 at 3:25am

Albert.......

Your blog is thought provoking, to say the very least. My only response is that every thing that God ...the triune God, did, was for a reason. God needed a way to know which way humanity would go. Would humanity choose Him? The answer is "No".

When God created Adam, and then Eve, He set forth His Rules. Would man follow those rules? Would they decide for God? No and No.

Even today, we see myriad of people who do not choose Christ.

There were myriad of angels created, however.....many of them chose to disobey God. Was this what God wanted? I don't think so, but...He had to give them the choice. Else, He would be a dictator.

We had to know what was ahead of us. We had to have the right to choose God's way or evil's way. Else, how could we have *free will*?

Even with our own children...we have to let them know what is evil compared to what is good and to also let them know there are consequences. Today, when we don't discipline our children, we are removing the consequences from them. Without discipline we are telling them that evil is good. May that never be!

God gave man(Adam)to rule over the earth. He, through Eve, gave that ruling power to Satan. We are now stuck with the consequences. When we allow our leaders to do evil, we are condoning it. Evil has made its way into every facet of our lives. We have broken many of the laws that God established through His Wisdom....merely by allowing men, who do evil, to dictate how we live our lives.

I'm not so sure God foreordained evil. He had no intention of us becoming evil. He did not create us for that purpose. But given the attributes, He allowed us to have, we chose it. We have become acclimatized to it. We see it everywhere, and yet, in some instances, we call it good. May that never be!

Blessings.....

Rita