God's Predestination

Throughout the Bible, there are many parallels weaved and interlaced among each other, each pointing to Jesus and the story of His redemption. In Genesis, the Book of Beginnings, and the Revelation, the Book of the Completion, there are differences; however, there are a surprising amount of similarities. Differences can be identified, and will be delved into, as well as the different steps and similarities that lead to and point to God’s redemptive story. “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” (Ephesians 1:7)

Robert Charles Sproul, American Calvinist theologian, is co-pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford Florida, founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries and author of more than one hundred books. Hence, discovering his written opinion on the subject of predestination should not be a surprise. This author claims to “love the doctrine of predestination because it comforts and underlines the extent to which God has gone in our behalf. It is a theology that begins and ends with grace”. Hence, Sproul demonstrates a discernment of predestination which readers to experience John Calvin’s opinions through a modern lens. Along the way, the evaluation may reveal unknown or overlooked characteristics. Resultantly, this review will conduct a short summary of Chosen by God’s content and survey its major strengths and weaknesses, providing researchers information by which the work can be evaluated.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2). To those in the Biblical times, oceans represented chaos. Oceans caused fear—oceans were unexplored and full of the unknown. This verse displays how, in Christianity, God is not overwhelmed by chaos but controls it—and not only does he control it but he creates beauty from it. Adam and Eve first observed both God’s creation and the chaos that still remained. Both Adam and Eve were tempted by the serpent and thus original sin was established. Original sin is one component that sets Christianity apart from other religions. Some religions, like Judaism, do not believe in original sin because it means that people are born either good or bad; however, Christianity looks at original sin with the idea that people sin by nature and look to God for his grace.

Fate, being always truly unknown and seemingly static, is not something that one should tamper with. It leads all decisions and outcomes, if one so chooses to believe in the concept of predestination. In Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, three witches decisively go against their orders and toy with the lives of thousands of people by telling riddles of the future and it’s biddings. Evidently, all those who were given a glance into their future by the meddling trio soon let sanity slip through their fingers and fell into their eventual demise. Banquo, who being told of his kins’ fortune and fames soon to come, grows weary of his friend and is soon killed out of fear. Although his timidity was wise, it did not help him in living to see such

Due to the Bible solely being inspired by God, but strictly composed by men, an argument becomes clearly evident that both human and divine elements construct the Scripture. Without the divine component, God’s revelation

Limiting the Creator to mere man-made principles shows a lack of faith in Him. Even theistic evolutionists agree that God is not subjected to the law of man. Commentaries of the Bible offer a different spin on familiar stories. Through research, reaching Robert Alter’s The Five Books of Moses brought the Pentateuch into a light otherwise unexplored. On page twenty-three of Alter’s commentary – as he discusses

Humanity’s most baffling affliction and puzzlement must be, to some degree, our and our environment’s origin. To the secularist it seems there are two possibilities for the beginning of mankind: The Big Bang, and Evolution. However, Christianity supplies one definite supposition: a universe created by an omnipotent ruler, who was never Himself created, but rather resides in eternity. [1] Human minds may be tempted to sway to the ‘comfort’ of believing in a life to which they glorify themselves and serve themselves only. Our conceptions of ethical code rely on our discernment of creation and the beginning of space and time. As such, if divine creation is properly chosen as valid by an individual, as Christianity provides, there is a God whom

The Book of Genesis introduces the story of creation and lays the foundation of the concept of sin. The dichotomy between good and evil is highlighted throughout Genesis. Contrary to what people would expect of the Bible, many people’s source of religious ethics, there seems to be ultimately more evil than good prevailing. The question arises as to why these heedless acts of wrongdoing appear so frequently in the text, whether justified or not. The author of Genesis writes of the actions of Adam and Eve and the eating of the forbidden fruit, and introduces sin into the chapter to exemplify the human nature of deception and wrongdoing.

It is believed by Christians that God is omnipotent, all powerful, omniscient or all -knowing, as well as omnibenevolent, meaning possessing perfect goodness. God, according to many theorists and philosophers such as Aquinas, is said to have the fate of the universe in its hands and is present in all places and times; past, present and future. However, if this is the case, it encourages many to question if there is really such a thing as “free will”, or if we are merely put on this earth to live out a pre - established plan set up by a “perfect being”.

Thus, there is no cause of the justness of the divine will; rather, the divine will itself generates justness.” Accordingly, the two passages from Genesis and Exodus affirm for us that no moral bases exist outside of God’s sovereignty, nor does God change from one day to the next offering some capricious moral law, rather he is the Creator of all things and remains steadfast and immutable. HE IS WHO HE IS and from him – that is, his very nature – flows what is the definition of right and wrong.

Futhermore, Hendel then establishes that the three sources, J, P, and E, which are responsible for the blended Genesis we interpret today have conflicts much more symbolic than merely a variation on their names for God but rather differ significantly on their illustrations of God's deportment. The variation of God’s behavior creates a conflict for the implications of

the cause of predestined, whether predestined is certain, and whether the number of the predestined is certain.

As we reflect upon Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 we observe two stylized forms of writing. Chapter 1 we see as an outline of the events of creation and chapter two we obtain details. 1. In chapter 1 a majestic God is speaking from his heavenly throne as he plans his creation. Chapter 2 however, appears to be an intimate relationship between God and humankind evidenced by the style of writing.

This paper will approach each aspect of God Divine decrees, from a biblical standpoint and His plan of salvation. The working of God’s plan includes three periods in time:

There is a sense in which every christian for every christian that believe that he live in a universe that is a creation and that source of creation is the god who is revealed in the bible as marker of heaven and earth the true whether the christian is a young-earth creationist an old earth creationist an intelligent design creationist or an evolutionary creationist while these various creationist may strongly disagree among themselves about the how of creation and subscribe to different portrait or models of creation they do agree on certain essential beliefs or doctrine about creation beliefs that they find anchored in revelations of holy scripture so to look at creation from the perspective of christian faith we being with the bible First, we need to understand what the word means. "Creation," as I shall use the word in these essays, refers both to the process and product of creation: we apply it both to the creation of the universe and to the universe as a creation. And I must make an important clarification from the start. Too often, "creation" as process is popularly understood, and thus misunderstood, to refer simply to the origination of the universe. Many people, it appears, think of creation as something that happened in the past. To them "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1) means God did this way back then Christians have been arguing rather vociferously in recent years over how far back then is, as many believers accept the