My problem with the idea of God selecting us from the start is this:
If He not only know, but DECIDES "Jack" will be saved and "John" won't , why bother putting them both on earth?
Jack can't help John come to Christ anyway....
also, that means God selected John for hell. You can't get around that one with only two possibilities.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God
Also, if we were selected from the beginning, why all this talk of having been lost and doomed and then saved? If we were always save, we were never lost.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
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Yes, from a human perspective you would have to say that John was ordained to go to hell. Which doesn't seem fair, right? But that IS fair. That is the only thing fair about the world because everyone deserves hell. God selected SOME for life everlasting, and some he left to be doomed in hell. "Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated." When we look at the biblical account of Jacob and Esau, they both start out pretty much creeps. God selected Jacob before he was born, and then molded him to His purpose. Esau was dammed before he was born. It is called "double predestination" and in this day and age it is a hard pill to swallow. Think of it this way:
If I made two robots, and both of them turned out wrong and didn't do what I wanted, I have a perfect right to destroy them both. I also have a right to destroy one and keep the other, fitting it into my purposes and taking care of it. No one would call that unfair. Yet when God takes what he created, and justly damns some of his fallen creatures, it is considered unfair, unloving, unjust. Romans 9 has a startling example of this, and a startling conclusion which basically says "shut up!"
[SUP]10 [/SUP]Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. [SUP]11 [/SUP]Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: [SUP]12 [/SUP]not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” [SUP]13 [/SUP]Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
[SUP]14 [/SUP]What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! [SUP]15 [/SUP]For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
[SUP]16 [/SUP]It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. [SUP]17 [/SUP]For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” [SUP]18 [/SUP]Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
[SUP]19 [/SUP]One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” [SUP]20 [/SUP]But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” [SUP]21 [/SUP]Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
[SUP]22 [/SUP]What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? [SUP]23 [/SUP]What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— [SUP]24 [/SUP]even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
I realize this is a much disputed chapter, but the message is clear. God reserves some of his created beings for hell (dishonor) that we might see His glory. His glory is displayed not necessarily in sending the unjust to hell, (though I think in heaven as perfect beings we will indeed see the glory of this) but in SAVING some sinners to heaven. And as the KJV would say (in it's rather blunt fashion): "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?" Paul knows that this is a difficult truth, his response is "believe. Who are YOU to protest to the Creator?"