Questions and Answers: God knew everything before he created the heavens and the earth, so why did God make people who he knew in advance would turn on him and go to hell?

Obey your flesh and descend into darkness

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

You may hear a question like this:

Answer:

This is a very deep question, and most people don’t like to become aware of how they think their thoughts. They don’t like to think about their own bias, presuppositions, and faulty reasoning. In fact, we humans cannot think correctly without the anointing of the Holy Spirit on our minds and without our minds being in submission to the Holy Spirit. The battle is for the mind. (Read More)

God did know everything that would happen before He created the angels, humanity, or anything else. God knew that Satan would rebel and that Adam and Eve would sin.

Note that the position of mankind is far better at the end of the Book of Revelations that it was at the beginning of the Book of Genesis. God is not going to restore us to the Garden of Eden where we are innocent and ignorant. He is restoring us to a much higher place. We don't have all the details, but we can trust God that He is taking the most compassionate path for creation to move from its condition at first creation to the point known as "the restitution of all things" when God will be "all things in everything."

While we may not fully understand, we can see something from a Bible verse that is read at most weddings that explains three very interesting things. The man is the head of the woman. Christ is the Head of the Church. God is the Head of everything.

With that in mind, go back to Genesis and see the type and let God reveal what He wills to you. Adam was alone and it wasn't good. Everything was good but this wasn't good. Not only that, but there was nothing that had been created that was suitable for Adam. God took part of Adam, his rib, and made Eve from that rib. Now, Adam was incomplete without Eve. The rib had been transformed into the suitable helper for Adam. The two together could produce life, which Adam could not have produced before Eve was given to him. Now, look at Christ and the Church. Christ took of Himself and put it into His Body, the Church. He chose to be incomplete without the Church. The Church became the fullness of Him. It was necessary that there be a falling away. The Church had to go out from Christ, which we see in what is known as the dark ages. Now, we see the Church being restored to Christ. God created using a part of Himself, His Word. His Word came to the earth to redeem it back to Himself.

This is as far as can be gone into here. These are questions that are very deep and have to do with the very nature of reality. All we know is that all things will be restored to God at the end of the eons of eons (sometimes translated as for ever and ever).

Questions and Answers: God knew everything before he created the heavens and the earth, so why did God make people who he knew in advance would turn on him and go to hell?

How can we know anything about anything

Answer:

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