The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Free will

1. Kyle is 100% correct that men freely choose to remain in sin.

2. I stand firm that no one is FORCED to choose anything other than what they desire to do. There is no contradiction between these two truths. If you don't like being a human being, then why not use your "free-will" to change that, e.g., grow wings and fly like a bird. Your consternation and objections are a judgment upon God's perfect wisdom in creating men as He willed for His glory. The postlapsarian condition of man's nature; corrupt, evil, wicked, sinful, anti-God, etc., is man's doing and not God's, even though it was decreed by God. Man FREELY chose to disobey the explicit command of God to not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam was told by his Creator that he would suffer the penalty of death if he failed to obey. He FREELY chose to disobey. There was no compulsion on God's part to force Adam to sin.

3. I asked you to consider the crucifixion of the Lord Christ and explain how you think that came about, either by the determinate council of God or outside of God's determinate council, which would mean that billions upon billions of prior events leading up to the crucifixion happened by sheer chance. So, tell me which you believe is the way it happened. Here is how God has explained what happened:

Acts 2:23 (KJV) "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:"

Acts 3:18 (ASV) "But the things which God foreshowed by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled."

Acts 4:27-28 (KJV) "For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done."

Acts 13:27-29 (KJV) "For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled [them] in condemning [him]. And though they found no cause of death [in him], yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took [him] down from the tree, and laid [him] in a sepulchre."

Now, please tell me who among the thousands of people who were involved in Christ's crucifixion did so against their will? Was there even one who screamed in protest against their crying out, "Crucify Him!"? Which of the Roman soldiers tried with everything within themselves to not pound the nails into Christ's hands but were not able to overcome an alien force that compelled them to do so?

1. Yes, God foreordained the Fall. How else could it have happened? Did it happen due to mere chance? Is there anything that occurs which God has not ordained according to His good pleasure? (cf. Ps 135:5,6; Isa 14:24,27; 46:9,10; 55:11; Dan 4:35; Rom 11:33-36) Can you comment on these inspired texts?

2. There is no incompatibility between God's absolute sovereignty and man's freedom/responsibility. God didn't create man's fallen nature, i.e., he did not take a sinless man and by some magical deitistic morphosis transform him into something evil against the man's will. Have you ever taken the time to read Jonathan Edward's "The Freedom of the Will"?