This is one of those debates that from the predestination point of view is meaningless. Why? Because God has simply predestined me to believe in free will, so nothing can change that.
The Bible teaches both, free will and predestination. Instead of choosing just one, we must reconcile both.
But you ask: Where is free will taught? For example: When God commands His people to repent, and says "but ye would not" or something similar to that.
It would make no sense for God to ask people to repent, when it is infact His fault they wont repent. All God has to do is give them repentance and faith, as the calvinists believe. Yet God refuses to give people this grace, and continues to ask and command them to repent. This is not logical, nor biblical, and just makes God out to be the same as Pharaoh in these verses:
Exodus 5:16 There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, Make brick: and, behold, thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own people.
Pharaoh was asking something unreasonable.
Blaming God, eh Hevosmies? Tis "God's fault", His people wouldn't come unto repentance? When all along, tis God
attempting in the
growing of his
children, into becoming
MEN!
Although, the Kingdom of God, and Kingdom of Light, has got its enemies? In
more cases then not, and this might help some of those who
believe, and have
accepted Jesus, and are finding out, there are, or is just "some" (for lack of a better term) "things", usually concerning the "individual's" personality, or character, or (in more cases then not)
INTEGRITY, that are "seen" in the convert's eyes, as in "one being
pursued by the devil", and, cannot seem to shake, or "cast out", or overcome! And, to the convert, seems as if God has left, or forsaken them? This, is
not the case!
Using an illustration, of a stalk of wheat as
ONE converted soul? That for you non agrarian types, produces
many grains from the "original plant",
IF allowed to grow, and not become self righteous in its producing
one grain? When God, also called an "husbandsmen", "draws
near" the plant, and strives in
"unentangling" AT THE "ROOT LEVEL", those "
tares", as they are referred to in the parable, so that the "wheat plant" might produce even
more grains? It's God Himself, who is (how can I say)
holding the "convert" there! "Waiting, and watching",
for, or
until, that particular convert, of that particular "wheat plant" realizes, that, and
confronts, that particular, aspect of itself, that is trying to "sneak" into the sheeps pen, some "other" way, then the Sheeps gate! Which, these days is Jesus of Nazareth! Ya
can't CON God!
It was Israel's repeated
attempts at this same "
Con game", or, in the "flesh's" "reasoning itself"
right out of salvation, that God couldn't bend over backwards ANY LONGER! Which, so oft times happens when "material empiricism", (or that which is seen, and can be recreated)
blocks THAT which is "spiritual", and
cannot be seen, with "flesh eyes!"
It's
not God's fault! It's these "weak-arsed" gullible, and empirically driven "flesh bodies!"
2
