haibe:

Yes thanks i agree with this reasoning and i hope we all accept Gods provision of salvation.

octavian: God created Lucifer (devil) to be an angel just to Worship him and lead the choir of Heaven.. Lucifer had a change of heart and became proud of his position, thinking God never allowed Angels to have their freewill but were compelled to worship only him(God). Pride set in because he (Lucifer) was the morning star, God knew all his plans but gave him time to repent, which he did not before he fell.

Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God, they were never to eat the fruit from the Tree of Life but Satan who was wiser than them knew if he could deceive them into believing they will not DIE then Gods' creation and plan would be defeated. So God never made a mistake in creation any of them, he gave them the FREEWILL of choice, either good or evil..

OLAADEGBU:

I know you will not like your wify or children to be robots that just do what you command without any mind of their own. You will be more satisfied if your wify or children love and obey you respectively. If your wify and children who have the potential to hate or disobey you as a husband and father choose to love and honour and respect you don't you think that will be a better proposition than to say that they had no choice other than to do as you wish?

God created angels and humans with the potential to either obey or disobey Him. He created them to be free to worship Him as they choose even though God knew that they would disobey Him as they had the potential to sin. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden, the Bible tells us that in Adam the whole Adamic race sinned and fell together with him. The amazing thing is that God in His wisdom now uses our sin to show how loving, just and merciful He is to us.

It is because of our sin that God stepped out of eternity and stepped into history to be a man born of a virgin to die on the cross for you and me. He then rose from the dead to save us from the penalty of sin.

Do you now see how much God loves us by pardoning our sins and giving us a way to be reconciled back to Him because Jesus Christ took the punishment of our sin? Therefore, we are to be blamed for sin and not God. But because of of our sin, the Almighty God is seeking to save us and show us the most amazing love He has for us just as a husband would love his loyal wife or obedient children who choose to do so out of their own free will.

OLAADEGBU:

I know you will not like your wify or children to be robots that just do what you command without any mind of their own. You will be more satisfied if your wify or children love and obey you respectively. If your wify and children who have the potential to hate or disobey you as a husband and father choose to love and honour and respect you don't you think that will be a better proposition than to say that they had no choice other than to do as you wish?

God created angels and humans with the potential to either obey or disobey Him. He created them to be free to worship Him as they choose even though God knew that they would disobey Him as they had the potential to sin. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden, the Bible tells us that in Adam the whole Adamic race sinned and fell together with him. The amazing thing is that God in His wisdom now uses our sin to show how loving, just and merciful He is to us.

It is because of our sin that God stepped out of eternity and stepped into history to be a man born of a virgin to die on the cross for you and me. He then rose from the dead to save us from the penalty of sin.

Do you now see how much God loves us by pardoning our sins and giving us a way to be reconciled back to Him because Jesus Christ took the punishment of our sin? Therefore, we are to be blamed for sin and not God. But because of of our sin, the Almighty God is seeking to save us and show us the most amazing love He has for us just as a husband would love his loyal wife or obedient children who choose to do so out of their own free will.

phxc:
From my understanding of choices, given two choices to make, freewill is the ability to choose neither. More like a robber pointing a gun to your head and saying "Your money or your life" and telling you you have a choice.

alexleo: ]

They are not the same. In your example you lose either ways but in God's case you choose him and you gain or reject him and lose. Its just like a son who rejected his father and declared another person to be his father. He stops answering his father's name and changed it with the other man's name. By so doing he has no moral right to inherit any of his father's wealth. When you choose to live a life or sin you simply becomes of the devil and has no moral right to inherit God's kingdom. You cant be working for union bank and be earning salary from First Bank.

cyrexx: @ alexloe and oladegbu,
pls abeg no vex o,
i'm just confused about christianity.
from your analogy about father-son and bank-employee, they way christians present the gospel to us is that we will go to hell if we refuse to pray the salvation prayer not if we deny God as our Father. many people in Iran for example who do not believe Christianity is the way, will go to hell, not because they willfully deny God but for not praying the salvation and accepting Christ as their Lord according to christian teachings.
Now, if a man did not pray the salvation prayer, is it justice to torture such a man in excruciating pain for trillions and trillions and trillions of years for eternity. no true father will do that to any son, no matter the offense of that son, and no bank can legally torture another banks employee in this manner for refusing to work with them. is that justice or wickedness. it is this idea about God that was painted in such a cruel manner by preachers that drifted me away from christianity. is it how God truly is?

thanks

OLAADEGBU:

All those who find themselves God for all eternity are there because they exercised their free will and the same goes for those who find themselves in hell. God respects what we do with our free will. He has now given us the privilege through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ to choose not to sin but please God.

Jenwitemi:

Olaadegbu, tell me a better way of creating robots than giving them just 2 choices; LOVE GOD OR BURN. You call that having freedom of choice? You call that giving freewill? Your idea of choices are totally skewed, my friend.

alexleo:

And of course true obedience becomes true when there is freedom to disobey. If somebody is obedient when he has no choice to disobey then the obedience cannot be said to be true until when he finds himself in an environment where he has option to disobey. If in that environment he still continues to obey that is when the obedience can be said to be true. Adam and Eve had the freedom and rather than prove their obedience the chose to disobey. Our obedience and love for God becomes true when in the midst of freewill to disobey you choose to love and obey him. Even as human beings, every father will be happy to see the child choosing to obey him even when the child has freedom not to obey. Its always a thing of joy when a father sees that in his child.
God also takes so much delight seeing us choosing to obey him in the midst of freedom to disobey.

OLAADEGBU:

Where you are getting it wrong is your misunderstanding of "freedom of choice". Freedom doesn't mean that you are free to commit any sin or crime without consequence, freedom means that you are free to choose not to sin. It means to be free to live for the purpose you were created for.

haibe: Am a christian and still one but something borders me, God is omniscient and knows the end from the beginning, he knew satan and adam and eve will sin S̶̲̥̅Ơ̴̴̴̴̴̴͡ why did he create them since he knows the reward of sin is death and according to Jesus only few will be saved(mattew 7:14), There are now millions of people who are
burning, in agony, faces creased in
incessant pain, torment beyond
imagination, limbs torn, emotions stretched
like rubber that can never break and in a
world of pain for ETERNITY.
For them my heart grieves so strongly that
it brings tears to my eyes……But God knew
this would happen. I find it very difficult
to separate the God that we are supposed
to follow by “faith” and one that would
‘create’ knowing that there would be so
much carnage for so few survivors.
Why did God d̶̲̅σ this?

cyrexx: @ alexloe and oladegbu,
pls abeg no vex o,
i'm just confused about christianity.
from your analogy about father-son and bank-employee, they way christians present the gospel to us is that we will go to hell if we refuse to pray the salvation prayer not if we deny God as our Father. many people in Iran for example who do not believe Christianity is the way, will go to hell, not because they willfully deny God but for not praying the salvation and accepting Christ as their Lord according to christian teachings.
Now, if a man did not pray the salvation prayer, is it justice to torture such a man in excruciating pain for trillions and trillions and trillions of years for eternity. no true father will do that to any son, no matter the offense of that son, and no bank can legally torture another banks employee in this manner for refusing to work with them. is that justice or wickedness. it is this idea about God that was painted in such a cruel manner by preachers that drifted me away from christianity. is it how God truly is?

thanks

Mr_Anony:

Sorry I haven't read all the other comments so this may already have been settled.

God knows all(omniscient), sees all (omnipresent) and is all powerful (omnipotent)

The misconceptions I feel you are having:

Omnipotent: means He is powerful enough to do all things. This doesn't mean he is directly responsible for every single thing that happens.
Omnipresent: This means He is everywhere and can see from all angles.
Omniscient: This means He knows everything and can predict the future much like an expert chess player can predict all possible outcomes of a chess game. This does not mean He controls the future with an iron hand.

The events at the garden of Eden was not the only possible outcome of that situation but it was the one they chose. God's plan for all creation including man and the devil was to give glorify Him but they chose to be separated from God and that is exactly what hell is while heaven is total fellowship with God.

God has now prepared for us Christ Jesus as His rescue plan for humanity so that we don't go to hell but we can by accepting Christ come into fellowship with Him.

cyrexx: @ alexloe and oladegbu,
pls abeg no vex o,
i'm just confused about christianity.
from your analogy about father-son and bank-employee, they way christians present the gospel to us is that we will go to hell if we refuse to pray the salvation prayer not if we deny God as our Father. many people in Iran for example who do not believe Christianity is the way, will go to hell, not because they willfully deny God but for not praying the salvation and accepting Christ as their Lord according to christian teachings.

Now, if a man did not pray the salvation prayer, is it justice to torture such a man in excruciating pain for trillions and trillions and trillions of years for eternity. no true father will do that to any son, no matter the offense of that son, and no bank can legally torture another banks employee in this manner for refusing to work with them. is that justice or wickedness. it is this idea about God that was painted in such a cruel manner by preachers that drifted me away from Christianity. is it how God truly is?
thanks

pattybf: i'm a christain but always confused abt all these unexplained teachings of d bible, moreso when preachers giv different meanings to d same verses & 'books' i know we ve been told all things r nt meant to be understood bt @least certain things shld've been clarified to avoid all these confusion.

It seems like those folks in old testament enjoyed more than us, they were afraid of judgement as a result of choices they made since there was no law guiding them, bt then i wonder how Cain & Abel got their wives since they were d only children of Adam&Eve @ d time!

991: that brings back the common-sense-question, "who really were these biblical/quranic characters; god, lord, eve, adam, eden, snake, etc
google "The Anunnaki" study it with open mind, also read Genesis 6:1-4, then ask yourself who were those sons of god? who were those daughters of men? and finally who were the nephilims?

Laryokeke: Hence, reason should be abrogated while faith is perpetrated.

haibe:
Read genesis 5:4, first of all, its cain that got a wife and not abel, abel was killed. Genesis 5:4 explains that adam begat sons and daughters, because the bible didn't talk about the other sons and daughters doesn't mean they did not exist, apostle john made us know why all things can't be recorded because the world itself wouldn't contain the books that should be written(john 21:25), so cain must have married one of his sisters since at that time inbreeding wasn't a sin. And you should note that the bible never said cain was the first born but first man(genesis 4:1) S̶̲̥̅Ơ̴̴̴̴̴̴͡ its possible that he had elder sisters and probably younger once(not sure), but that's by the way, what you should note is that cain and abel were not the only children of adam but that he had sons and daughters(gen 5:4) and cain must have married one of his sisters since inbreeding was not yet declared sin until the time of moses, God bless you.

Demain_man:

You did not answer my question sir. Will there be freewill in heaven? If not why did God not just create the world like that from the begining knowing well in advance that billions will end up choosing wrongly anyways.

Better still why didn't he just create those that would have qualified for heaven with or without free will and spare the remaining billions the stress of this terrible world!!!

Demain_man:

To even add to the torture he gave mankind unequal playing field to work with. While some were born into so much riches and blessings others are born into some serious 'shit' with hunger, war and diseases all the way until they die. While some do not need to pray to receive their own blessings others are asked to pray, fast, give offering, sow seed, pay tithe before they can receive which in most cases end in them being poorer.

I just can make any head or tail about the whole concept, seriously!!!

logicboy:

Nonsense.

You are truly brainwashed if you believe that

OLAADEGBU:

Your concept of freedom may be different to mine but you have to know that there are two laws binding upon everyone. The law of sin and death and then the law of Christ otherwise called the the perfect law of liberty.

Have you heard of the phrase that we should not "take liberty for license"?

This law sets us free from slavery to sin and gives us the desire to please the Lord and also gives us the ability to do so. It is not as though we are now without law and thereby free to indulge our carnal appetites.