FREE WILL! why cant god physically show himself?

[Drich]

Couldn't help but notice the offer you make in your signature, Drich. I've been looking into ordering a free bible and was wondering if you'd have a recommendation. The thing is, I'm a hairy guy and so I go through a lot of paper. I'm looking for something especially soft.

Phone books work better for toilet paper. bibles tend to be made of the thin stuff which makes it too easy 'punch through' resulting in the hated 'brown thumb syndrome.' plus the pages are bigger.. something tells me by the content of your posts, you would need the added volume lager pages would offer...

---

Yeah, no. Nice red herring and completely nonseical statement. And that doesn't even have anything to do with the video.

Yeah I did not watch the video.

I'm sorry Drich, but what you're talking about has nothing to do with free will or choice. If we don't have a completely independent will, we don't choose anything because we have no control over how our 'wills' act outside our control. what you're talking about is autonomy which itself is not really the issue here.

Ok, lets start over you seem to be lost. We do not have free will or complete autonomy. we have but only one choice in this life to make, as Sin dominates out complete existance. That choice boils down to one question do we want redemption for sins or not?

So in other words, you retract your claim of God revealing himself would destroy the purpose of our lives then.

The purpose of our lives is to play out the desires of our heart apart from the known Glory of God. If God's glory is known then how can we live the life we were purposed to live?

Because then God could just reveal himself to everyone, and thus it wouldn't be "centered around one choice", as you put it.

It would still center around one choice, but rather than freely choose we would feel obligated to choose. then wonder for eternity why we went to Hell anyway.

And this is the usual Christian cop-out. All it is is an attempted shield from the fact that there are those who clearly seek, and yet do not find.

There are those who truly Ask and Seek and Yes they truly do not find find. Why? Because we are not command to truly Ask and Seek... We are Commanded to Ask, Seek and knock. Without the knocking we are doomed to not find anything. Why? Because in order to find God we all must spend time seriously scrutinizing what we believe in most this results in a period of disassoceiated belief. Meaning we seperate ourselves from our father's religions in order to seek our own. If we do not seek we will never get past this schedualed stop. If you look at just about every single person the bible mentions they spend a time or period seeking or even lost in the desert (The desert being metaphorical or in the case of the jews, david, Christ, Paul, Moses and the like it was literal.) Like wise we are all to spend a time wandering seeking..) This is where most of the 'true askers and seekers' on this website or the people of this website seem to know have all walked away.

If you do not have the humility to A/S/K as outlined in luke 11 and in the life of every single character outlined in scripture that God used is some great way, then that asker/seeker must have not been that genuine beyond what they expected/demanded of God.. In otherwords if they expected God to react on their time table rather than submiting to His then they did not have the humility needed to approach God in the first place meaning they did not Behave in a manner consistant with Luke 11, no matter what they felt at the time.

Are you a complete dunce? NO ONE who KNEW (in other words, could not be wrong about) the fact that they would be infinitely tortured would risk it
There would be NO chance of saving yourself in such a world, and given one's knowledge of God's (and Hell's) existence, it would never happen..

You seem to be missing an element, did you read the passage I left from Mat 7?
If you did you would see that there are those who go through the motions of Christianity and yet Jesus deems them as unbelievers anyway. even though they did great miricals and good works. Therefore those people would be in Hell, even if they went through the motions of christianity.

Where is the Calvinist who believes themself to be unelect? Where is the Armenian who believes in the saving power of Christ, and yet chooses not to believe anyway? We already see that in this world, much less in a world where it is completely known that God and Hell are real.

Actually we don't. because there isn't a place where we can see the reality of Hell. There is a vast difference between perceived persecution and punishment and known persecution and punishment. Our history shows that we will endure potential of death and destruction if there is a hope that we can retain some symbolance of a lifestyle we can find acceptable verses following a path that will lead to a horrid destructive end.

Look at what the Jews were willing to endure under hitler until the purpose of the death camps were known.

The were flagged for persuction, rounded up to live in gettos, then moved to labor camps and then on to death camps.. Once word of the death camps got out, Jews were alot harder to find, they took greater risks to avoid captured and when cornered fathers killed their own families to avoid being taken to the death camps.

That is the difference between perceived destruction and the confirmation of destruction. If we had a window into hell the variables are gone, and perceived choice goes away.

Again this life is about proving to ourselves whether or not we would choose to follow God if we did not know of all He offered/His glory.

When we know of God/Hell then the choice we make is no longer about what out hearts truly want it is about saving our skin.. Not that God is fooled by this effort. Meaning we are still going to hell (some of us) because even if we lie to ourselves God still knows the truth about our heart and this whole life would be completely meaningless. (As we would have lied about the reason we want to goto Heaven to ourselves.)

Fundie-proselytizing flavor.

then lego my eggo