The lot is cast into the lap,..........

[BigHamster]

....but its every decision is from the LORD.

Proverbs 16:33

I had a whole bunch of bible quotes to post...but something made me post this particular one.

[B. W.]

....but its every decision is from the LORD.

Proverbs 16:33

I had a whole bunch of bible quotes to post...but something made me post this particular one.

The lot is cast into the Lap - but (the final) decision comes from the Lord...
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[BigHamster]

"The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases”

- Proverbs 21:1

[BigHamster]

"There will come a day when you will feel totally helpless, a mere pawn of destiny, and then you will begin to realize that God alone is your haven of security."

- Paramhansa Yogananda




Oops, how did this quote get here o_O

[BigHamster]

"Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven."

- C.H. Spurgeon

[Philip]

"Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven."

Rather, you might want to look across the entirety of Scripture rather than to cherrypick some man's Calvinist distortions of it. As rephrased, per Calvinist logic: There is NO free will but GOD'S that has anything to do with Salvation and one's destiny. With Calvinist thinking, there is NO choice or role of man in being saved, or even in responding to choose or reject God, except as God so WILLS a person to respond. In Calvinism, ALL responses to God are HIS decision. Meaning He also would have chosen to doom billions of people to Hell - not for ANY decisions they would ultimately make, in regards to God - but ONLY due to decisions GOD made for them, and before they were even born of had sinned even once. Of course, we KNOW that is not true from many Scriptures.

AND we know that God does not cause sin! As what does God redundantly assert about a person whose heart remains deliberately hard and continues to resist God?: That He considers this a great evil and terrible sin! So, did God close off and prevent peoples' ability to do the very thing He commands "ALL men EVERYWHERE" do (repent, have faith in Christ)? He commands it, but simultaneously insures that vast millions would never be able to obey it? If so, He would have assured ALL unbelievers' sin of permanent unbelief, and thus entrapped them in what God also calls a life-long, horrible sin. Which any student of Scripture should know to be false! Not to mention, God is VERY angry at people who fail to come to Him, in faith in Jesus. But IF He has chosen that they could not, they why would God be upset at His own decision???!!!

Five Point Calvinism is a merely man-made tradition and terrible heresy! And it directly contradicts Scripture's assertions that God wants all to come to faith in Christ and that because He "so loved the WORLD" of sinners is THE very reason Jesus came to earth! If Calvinist assertions were true, it would mean God hated vast millions before their births and intentionally trapped them in lives of great misery now, and in punishment for ETERNITY! Wow, try to mentally glue THAT together with Scripture's revelations of a God Who loved us enough to die a miserable, painful death, to make possible a glorious eternity with Him!

[BigHamster]

Thanks for the response Phillip. This is another one on similar lines from our old friend Mr G......

"..the average man is indeed incapable of the single smallest independent or spontaneous action or word. All of him is only the result of external effect. Man is a transforming machine, a kind of transmitting station of forces."

"..a man is a very complex organism developed by evolution from the simplest organisms, and who has now become capable of reacting in a very complex manner to external impressions. This capability of reacting in a man is so complex, and the responsive movements can appear to be so far removed from the causes evoking them and conditioning them, that the actions of man, or at least part of them, seem to naïve observation quite spontaneous."

- Gurdjieff

From memory, Mr G asserts that the majority of humanity does not have 'Free will' or 'Individuality'.

[BigHamster]

And these..

"'Free will' is the function of the Master within us. Our will is the supremacy of one desire over another."
-Mr G.


"Every morning three million "free wills" flowed toward the center of the New York megapolis; every evening they flowed out again -- all by "free will," and on a smooth and predictable curve." - Heinlein

[Philip]

"'Free will' is the function of the Master within us. Our will is the supremacy of one desire over another." -Mr G.

It depends upon what is meant by "the Master within us" - does that mean we can only do as God wills us to do, or does it merely mean that God has given humans an ability to reason and choose as they so desire, independent of what God would have them choose? As for sin, either we both desire and choose it, or God desires and chooses it for us. Wait a minute - GOD chooses sinful choices for us? It's GOD causing a person's sin???

[BigHamster]

"'Free will' is the function of the Master within us. Our will is the supremacy of one desire over another." -Mr G.

It depends upon what is meant by "the Master within us" - does that mean we can only do as God wills us to do, or does it merely mean that God has given humans an ability to reason and choose as they so desire, independent of what God would have them choose? As for sin, either we both desire and choose it, or God desires and chooses it for us. Wait a minute - GOD chooses sinful choices for us? It's GOD causing a person's sin???

I don't really have any answers yet, still investigating. I need to take into account whether someone is operating under the law or under grace.

I think those under the law are controlled by sins, desires and/or external conditions (ie. not much room there for 'free will').

This is good ! The prodigal son gets beaten-up by his own corrupt nature. God eventually slaps him in the face when God sees that he is ripe for the picking. The son wakes up and says "Crikey ! what was I doing ??" ...and so, now under grace, the son starts to acquiesce more and more to the master's "free-will".

YAY !

[BigHamster]

"Man does have limited free will; he can decide whether or not to surrender to the will of Krishna. All other material happenings and their implications are inconceivably predestined."

- Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

[Philip]

BigHamster: I think those under the law are controlled by sins, desires and/or external conditions (ie. not much room there for 'free will'

Where our will is free first comes from, is being made in God's Image - as He is a Being with free will. But our free will is limited to choices within the ones available to us. We can't choose to fly, go invisible, none of that. We can't make choices that, for us, don't exist, or that we're incapable of choosing/implementing. Of course, we can have desires for things beyond our grasp. As for being controlled by our sins - NO, but we are majorly impacted and influenced by our sin nature. But does it ultimately CONTROL us? Clearly not, as if so, God could not fairly command us to not sin - not if avoiding it would be impossible for us. Our choices stream from our mind/heart/desires, in which we often have an internal struggle with - but ultimately, this is where our choices spring from.

[BigHamster]

I've been stiffed !

"Accept your fate in humbleness. The course of a warrior's destiny is unalterable. The challenge is how far he can go within those rigid bounds, how impeccable he can be within those rigid bounds. If there are obstacles in his path, the warrior strives impeccably to overcome them. If he finds unbearable hardship and pain on his path, he weeps, but all his tears put together could not move the line of his destiny the breadth of one hair." - CC

[RickD]

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

WJC

[Philip]

And yet, if not with "that" woman...