Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: bnr-fos!bnr-public!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: He loves me, He loves me not, He loves me, He... Message-ID:Date: 12 Aug 89 02:03:44 GMT Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 151 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article fibercom!lab@uunet.uu.net (our moderator) writes: >[This continues a discussion with Dave Mielke, on the subject of >whether God hates those who are not saved. The argument in Dave's last >posting was (1) the scriptures teach that there is a judgement, in >which some perish. (2) those whom God loves must be saved. Therefore >there are some that God does not love. --clh] If I had no further Scriptural backing than that then I would have to be declared wrong. I have quoted a couple of Scriptures a couple of times which declare (I'll risk saying "very clearly") that there are those whom God does actually hate. Nobody has responded to these Scriptures in order to show me where my interpretation of them may be in error, yet nobody has acknowledged that they say what they say either. I shall requote them here and i urge everyone, especially those who insist on interpreting Scriptures literally, to make sure that they are included in whatever doctrine is being proclaimed. They are, after all, part of the Word of God too, and cannot be ignored if we want to insure that we are proclaiming the whole counsel of God. The apostle Paul declares the importance of this attitude in Acts 20:26-27 where he says "Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I {am} pure from the blood of all {men}. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.". Here are the two afore-mentioned Scriptures which tell us that God hates not only the sin but also the sinner. Psalm 5:5 says "The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.". Psalm 11:5 says "The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.". Let us Christians avoid the temptation to tell the world about the God that we wish we had, and rather tell them about the God whom we really do have, the God who is described by Himself in His Word. Failure to do this can hardly be expected to meet His aproval. A note to those who may think that I am prolonging this discussion at the risk of causing needless descention. I used to believe that God loves everyone but I have now discovered that this is not true. It is becoming more and more clear to me that those who arbitrarily tell others that God loves them are in danger of having told one of the biggest lies they could ever tell. This lie may be inadvertent, but ignorance of God's law has never been an acceptable excuse for its breakage. I am sure that all of us would like to be sure that we are witnessing to the unsaved in a way that would be in accordance with His law and would, thereby, be acceptable to Him. Since we know that people are saved by His Grace, then we should not expect Him to bring someone to salvation through a misrepresentation of His motives. Since it is He who does the actual saving, why need any of us worry about only saying things that please our hearers at the risk of committing sins by saying things that are not necessarily true. While we may claim success because there are those whom we have told that God loves them and who have been saved, this would only be because in those particular cases our declaration of God's love for those people was correct. This does not excuse, however, the sin of our lying to those whom God does not intend to save and who, therefore, do not respond, of God's love for them. In article fibercom!lab@uunet.uu.net (Lance Beckner) writes: >I'm sorry, but I never agreed that all of those whom God loves must be saved. >At present I am still holding to my original position that God loves >everyone. But many will reject His love, and they will perish as a result. Jesus says in John 6:44 "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.". If no one is able to come to Jesus unless the Father draws him, and if God loves everyone, then surely He draws everyone. If God draws everyone then the only reason that anyone would end up in hell would be his voluntary rejection of Him. Let us suppose that this conclusion is true and test it against a few other Scriptures. Jesus says in John 6:39 "And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.". If Jesus will lose none of those who have been given to Him by the Father then the only ones in danger of hell are those who have not been explicitly given to Him by the Father. If we assume that God draws everyone then only those who are being drawn yet have not explicitily been given are in danger of hell. This leaves us with the question "are there those whom the Father draws yet has not given to Jesus?". God says in Isaiah 55:10-11 "For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper {in the thing} whereto I sent it.". With a declaration like this, would God ever send forth His Word to draw someone and not succeed? I would like to suggest that the Father will only send forth His Word to draw someone if that person has been given to Jesus, otherwise He would be sending forth His Word only to have it return to Him void, not having accomplished the purpose for which it was sent. If He draws everyone, if everyone He draws has been given, and if everyone who has been given is not lost, then we are forced to conclude that no one is lost, i.e. everyone is saved and in absolutely no danger of having to endure hell. We know that this cannot be true because Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:13-14 "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide {is} the gate, and broad {is} the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait {is} the gate, and narrow {is} the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.". If the majority of us people will enter into the wide gate that leads to destruction, i.e. hell, then that same majority must not have been given to Jesus by the Father. If they were not given then they must not have been drawn because God tells us that He never sends forth His Word without it accomplishing its purpose. This now leaves us with the question "if God loves everyone then why does He only draw a minority of us to Himself?". Perhaps God's infinitely perfect love is deffective? I don't think so. He tells us in Psalm 5:5 and Psalm 11:5 that He hates those who commit sins. There is only one explanation that works when every single Scripture is taken into account. God should hate every single one of us because, as we are told in Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;". His hatred for those who commit sin is so great that He declared that the penalty for someone who commits a sin is hell, i.e. spiritual death, as we are told in Romans 6:23, which begins "For the wages of sin {is} death;". God wanted to save some people from this fate and, at the same time, to give them an irrefutable demonstration of the infinite nature of His love with which He would then love them throughout eternity. He, therefore, voluntarily chose those whom He would love, used His foreknowledge to determine exactly which sins they would commit, personally endured the penalties for each and every one of those sins, and then obligated Himself to love them because He could no longer hate them as He could no longer "see" those sins which He Himself had already paid for. We may not in any way claim that His love is less than infinite just because He has not chosen to bestow it on everyone. He would have demonstrated its infinite nature had He only bestowed it on one single person, because enduring hell (infinite punishment for infinite time) in a finite amount of time is already more than infinite suffering. The fact that He has chosen to bestow His love on a whole bunch of people makes it even more magnifiscent. I would like to conclude by quoting a couple more Scriptures in which God declares His absolute sovereignty and that nothing is occurring by chance. Let none of us ignore these Scriptures when attempting to seek truth. Romans 9:15 says "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.". Ephesians 1:11 says "In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:". Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014 856 Grenon Avenue Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 6G3 [Those interested in this discussion will want to refer to a posting later in this group by Stan Reeves. It is the only attempt I have seen so far to do just both to the passages Dave quotes and the evidence that God loves everyone. --clh]