zaitzeff

Janet,

thanks for taking my call Saturday night and for reading II Peter 3:9.
"The Lord is . . . not willing that any should perish . . ."

Have you thought much about this? On one hand, you say that God is unwilling that any should perish; on the other hand, you say that God creates individually and personally millions of people whom He foreknows with perfect and infallible foreknowledge that they will in fact "perish." God created Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam, bin Laden and Judas each one, personally, specifically and with perfect and infallible foreknowledge of their eternal fate, [that fate being, you would presumably assert, eternity in hell] and this same God, you say, is not willing that any should perish! OK, how is it that God's unwillingness that any should perish is so singularly ineffective and so irrelevant to what God actually does re creation? After all, I think you would admit, before each one was born, God could have chosen to not create Hitler and Saddam and all the others. God is unwilling that any, such as Hitler, should perish but that unwillingness on God's part does not affect God's actions while He is creating?! Do you think that God does not think ahead? Did Hitler's life catch God by surprise?

O lawyerly one, put what you think the Bible says on the stand and subject it to a little cross examination!

***

John,

if God does what you say He does--if I have understood you correctly, what God does is
to create various people whom God foreknows with perfect and infallible foreknowledge that they will perish in some way, either in eternal conscious torment or by ceasing to exist--then it is not simply that you have evil in your conception of God, but that God is in fact evil.
If you are right, God is evil.

Tell me, does it fill you with love, peace and joy to think that God, with perfect and infallible foreknowledge, creates these various people, who live their miserable and puny lives without God and then after death, cease to exist or spend eternity in torment. They serve their "evil" purpose--or don't serve their "good" purpose--and then God throws them away.

It makes you just want to praise God, apparently.

Peter Kirby

Previous thread (a short one) on the subject of universalism and the Bible.

best,
Peter Kirby