Lindsey and Sam are still here at my house.  They are painting the inside of their house and repairing some of the walls.  Sam has to work everyday, so it has taken them longer than they had planned.

When they asked if they could stay with me, I said, "Sure.  Come on."  And then there was a hesitation, and Lindsey said, "We have a cat."  Of course I wondered how this would work with Squig, but it's been fine.  The cat and Squig looked each other over and made friends.  No barking, no hissing, no problems.  Clovis (the cat) claimed the dining room table and looks down on Squig most of the time.  Squig doesn't understand why Clovis doesn't want to play with him.

On Sunday when I finished the lesson, I asked if there were any prayer requests for the week, and one of the women said, "I know this is trivial, but would you all pray for my dog.  He isn't in any pain, but he is eighteen years old and has been sick all week.  I love him.  I don't want him to suffer."

If you don't have a dog, you would agree with her that it was a trivial request.  But if you love your dog like I love Squig, you wouldn't think it was strange at all.  I use the word ACTS to concentrate when I pray.  Adoration, Confession, Thanks, and Supplication.  And when I get to Thanks, I always thank God for Squig.  He is such a sweet and loving companion.  So I didn't think her prayer request was strange at all.  We pray for those we love.

Squig trusts me.  If you feed and water your dog, and hold them when they are scared, they will trust you completely.  Squig is terrified of rain and shakes all over when it starts.  So I hold him.  Or put a blanket in my closet where he can lie down and hide in the dark.

That's what God does for us when we are scared of things we don't understand.  He holds us until it is all over.  "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters; he restores my soul...Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil..." Psalms 23

I grew up in a time when a traveling evangelist would come to town and everyone would turn out to hear him preach--every night for a week.  Sometimes two weeks.  And if the preacher was a youth evangelist, you could count on him preaching against 1. smoking, 2. drinking, and 3. dancing.  I didn't smoke.  I didn't drink.  But I did love to dance.

Everyone (I mean everyone) in school used to go to Teen Town on Friday nights to the dance--chaperoned by the parents and sanctioned by the City Council.  Kept us off the streets, and probably kept some kids from smoking and drinking.  (Which was forbidden at Teen Town.)  Kids didn't want to take a chance on not getting in.  They might fail the "sniff" test and the jig was up.

So it came as a shock to me when I read the scripture in Proverbs about the things that God hates. Those three things (smoking, drinking and dancing) didn't make the list.  They weren't even in the Ten Commandments!!!  I thought I was being pretty good at being pretty good.  But when I read Proverbs 6:16-19, I found out that I was busted.

"These six things the Lord does hate, yes, seven are an abomination unto him:  A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.  A heart that devises wicked imaginations, feet that are swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaks lies, and he (she) who sows discord among the brethren.

Nothing about smoking and drinking and dancing.  All seven things named in Proverbs are about how you treat other people.  Which Jesus covered when challenged by the Pharisees.  "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul.  And love your neighbor as yourself."

My knowledge about what constituted sin was very shallow when I was young.  I thought it was a list I could follow.  Come to find out it was a lot more than that.

I always post early.  But I forgot--because Ann called me to go to a neighborhood garage sale.  Those kind of sales make me go brain dead.  So here it is after 3 in the afternoon and I just realized that I had forgotten.

You are all probably tired of my latest rant on predestined damnation anyway.

I'll end that by saying that I love to study the Bible.  I love to put it together in my mind--when I have a question--so that it all makes sense.  I guess being a mathematician with a logical bent of mind makes me want to bring it all together when I have questions.

But in the end, it is God's spirit that reveals truth as we read his Word.  Things I have read dozens of times can jump out at me with new insight and I know that it is not from my own analysis, but from God.  Something I have read will connect in my brain with something I have memorized in the past and it's like slipping a button through a button hole.  It fits.

There are many scriptures that, if you take them by themselves, you can invent a new religion.  If you take the verse, "Jesus wept," and believe that we must all be exactly like Jesus, then you could invent a doctrine that says that we must all be weepers.  Or a slogan, "Come to worship at our church on Sunday and practice weeping."  Or that, "If you don't weep, then you aren't saved."  But you and I know that we must take the entire Word of God, and that every verse in the Bible must be verified by other verses.  The Bible is its own best reference.

I have been discussing a subject for the past few days that has no exact scriptural reference.  I have said that "Predestined damnation" is the flip side of the coin for those who subscribe to the doctrine of "Predestined salvation."  That you absolutely can't have one without the other.  But we must, "Study to show yourself approved unto God..."  2 Timothy 2:15.  Everyone should study scripture.  However, be careful not to try and make it say something that it doesn't say.

This theory of giving salvation to a chosen few is based on a verse--which taken by itself--has produced an entire religious following.  I can't buy into it--because I believe that God is good, not evil.  I can't believe that he would allow someone to be born that He has predestined to be damned to eternal hell.  I believe (based on scripture) that His hope is that every person who is born will choose Him.  And because of this, He expects you and me to spread the "Good news" to a lost world.

Romans 8:9 is the main scripture that this entire religious movement is built on.  "For those that God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son."  Can God "foreknow?" Of course.  Does the scripture say that He foreknows everyone who will accept him?  No.  Only those he chooses to foreknow.  Some people, like John the Baptist, were predestined, in the womb, to do a certain work and had a predestined purpose.  I also agree that all who accept Christ will be conformed to His image.  There are hundreds of opinions written on this word "foreknew" dating back to the 1400's.  All--opinions--taken for absolute truth.   I've read a bunch of them.  But I believe that at the moment you choose Him, of your own free will, you become a Child of God and start the conformation into His image.  God's original predestined plan of salvation--for everyone.

So, personally, I believe that we are all predestined for salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ.  God chooses all of us.  Everybody.  He is not willing that any should perish.  He died for everyone.  He paid the price on the cross for every human being.  Jesus bore every sin of every person that ever lived, or ever will live--those who accept God's gift of salvation (through their own free will) and those who reject Christ (by their own free will).  However, even though all sin, every sin, has been paid for, only those who repent and accept God's gift of his Son as a sacrifice for their sin will receive salvation.  God chooses you, but you in return must choose Him to seal the deal.  There is a price for salvation.  Repentance.

2 Peter 3:9 says,  "The Lord is not slack (late) concerning his promise (to return), but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."   That scripture says that God is still hopeful that all lost people will choose Him.  Which makes no sense if you believe that God has already done the choosing of who is going to make it and who is not!  Why would God be "hopeful" for something that isn't going to happen.  For something that he has already determined won't happen.  Hope means there is a chance.  God's hope is that you will accept his sacrificial lamb--Jesus.

That scripture makes no sense if God already knows who is going to trust Him and be saved.  And of course there is John 3:16 "For God so loved the world (everybody) that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes on Him shall not perish.  Whosoever, not a chosen few.

Don't get me wrong.  If God wants to know who is going to reject Him (before they are born), God certainly has to power to know that.  He is God.  He can do whatever He wants to do.  I just don't believe in predestined damnation.  Which is what you have--unless God makes a choice not to know.

I guess what I am trying to explain is that if something is already determined, God would not be hopeful that others would come to salvation.

And God is hopeful.  He says so in his Word.  He hopes all men will repent and turn to Him for their salvation.  He is the author of it.  It's free.

Yesterday my last paragraph that I wrote was:  "In my own mind, I have already decided that God can create man, give him free will to choose good or evil, give him the acumen to recognize that He, God, exists, and then--as God--choose not to know what the individual man will do concerning his decision to choose Christ as the sacrificial lamb of God--the path to fellowship with God himself.  Otherwise, God would be knowingly creating children, (since God is the author of all life), who are born doomed, and foreordained to eternal death.   If God is always good, that seems logically impossible."

To me, it is a conclusive argument against the concept that we are "Preordained to Salvation" which is a current philosophy going around in today's religious circles.  I don't think that you can have it both ways.  That is, that we can be preordained to salvation (through no choice of our own), without having a group of people who are preordained to damnation.  Which would mean that God is not good at all.  Which would mean that God is knowingly creating a group of people to torture in hell forever and ever.  Which is the flip side of the coin of "Preordination for salvation."

If God is the creator of all life; if God is always good (which we discussed yesterday); if God is all powerful; if God can do whatever He chooses to do; if God has given us free will, then how can God "pre-ordain" what we are going to choose to do.  That is--preordain the choice that we will make--to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, or to believe that He isn't.  That is the opposite of free will.  Of choice.  Man is thus nothing but God's puppet.

If I believed that only those who are "Preordained for salvation," will be saved,  why would I bother to follow the commands of Jesus to spread the Gospel.  It wouldn't make any difference one way or another.

And why would Jesus send his disciples out "two by two" to spread the word if it wasn't necessary?  Why would I follow the command to, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations.  Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."  Matthew 28:19.  Why bother with all of that if the outcome has already been decided?

The question that I asked in the Bible Study yesterday was, "Can God choose to not know something?"  Of course, there was much discussion about a Creator who can do anything He chooses.  But the discussion around  God choosing to "not do something" was divided.

There is not a definitive answer that I have found supported by scripture.  But since my "go to" system is always logic analysis, I start with things like, "When you add two to three, do you get five?"     And follow that up in a "Bible arena", and ask a question that can be supported by scripture, "Is God always good?"  And naturally I give a number of scriptures to tell what the Bible has to say.  Such as 1 John 1:5 where the disciple John (the beloved of Jesus) says: "This then is the message which we have heard of him (Jesus) and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all."

And then follow up--when they answer that God is always good with, "Is He all-powerful?  Can He do anything and everything?"  Which generally leads to answers such as, "Well, since we have free will, He can't force us to believe in Jesus.  We have to make a choice.  It's up to us."  Which I agree with.  And answers like, "Since he is always good, he can't contradict His character."  So, yes, there are some types of things that God has foreordained for Himself that He can't, by His nature, do.

As for "all powerful," I get answers like, "He can't contradict his promises."  Or quotes from the Lord's prayer, "Thine is the kingdom, and the glory, and the power..."  After ten or fifteen minutes of discussion about the character of God, I ask the question I mentioned, "Can God choose not to know something--or does He know everything?"  And by the time I ask that question, they are able to realize that some questions concerning God are exceedingly difficult.

In my own mind, I have already decided that God can create man, give him free will to choose good or evil, give him the acumen to recognize that He, God, exists and then--as God--choose not to know what the individual man will do concerning his decision to choose Christ as the sacrificial lamb of God--the path to fellowship with Him.  Otherwise, God would knowingly create children, (since God is the author of all life), who are born doomed, foreordained, to eternal death.   If God is always good, that seems logically impossible.