Noahs Ark Had No Rudder

[SirWulfe]

He gave us independence of choice. The ability to do good or evil, the greatest independence I can imagine. We failed in that, what makes you think you can do better now. Have you become wiser (not including in your own eyes), that you can be trusted with more independence, like perhaps helping other intelligent life mature in a good way? I dont think you know enough to be as good as, much less better than God. That was satan's thoughts, and now he is the main enemy of mankind.

Well, we didn't fail. One person failed, and even then, she ate an apple. I assume you are refering to Eve. I do believe I can be trusted to be independent. It's called being an adult. As for "helping intelligent life mature in a good way..." Isn't that called being a parent? Anyone who has a child is, quite literally, doing just that.

 

[Wired 4 Fishen]

But by choosing complete and utter obedience, you are forgoing your free will. You are saying "I don't want to think for myself, or do anything for myself. I want to rely completely on you for everything." The Bible is full of people who go, and do, for themselves. Fully independent people. While they may be doing something in the name of God, they pull through on their own.

This is false.
Friend I will choose by free will to do things God's Way over my own every time.

 

[Wired 4 Fishen]

Well, we didn't fail. One person failed, and even then, she ate an apple. I assume you are refering to Eve. I do believe I can be trusted to be independent. It's called being an adult. As for "helping intelligent life mature in a good way..." Isn't that called being a parent? Anyone who has a child is, quite literally, doing just that.

Shall we serve cookies with the milk?
Seems you are just wanting to argue your beliefs against God's Word.

That's your free Will
Enjoy

 

[Brad Huber]

No human parent does good to their child at all times. I'm sure you have heard the phrase "You are only human." We are so messed up as the human race, its only God's grace and help that keeps us going. And all you can think of is having less help from Him. Well, take your inheritance and go live it up, and when you are eating pig slop and think about how it was better trusting God to help you, then turn back to Him and ask if you can be His hired hand.

 

[SirWulfe]

That's pretty lame.
Man gives up and says there is no hope, the cancer is to far and you will die in days.......

Free Will Time
Believe man or believe God

Free Will Time
Give up and die
Seek God non stop and get healed and live.

No Friend man will never be able to dwell without possibilities on his own

Reaching the moon: impossible, until we decided to go
Curing smallpox: prayed to God for centuries. Man eventually beat it.
Curing HIV/AIDS: while not cured, its well on its way. It was deemed impossible not 30 years ago.
Sailing around the world: impossible, until someone decided to go for it.
Flying: impossible. Look at Icurus. He flew. Got cocky. Went to close to the sun, then fell to earth. Now, millions do it a day.
Point being: its only impossible, if you think it is.

 

[SirWulfe]

This is false.
Friend I will choose by free will to do things God's Way over my own every time.

But how do you KNOW it's God will? Man, I thought, cannot comprehend how God thinks, yet Man claims to know God's will.

 

[Wired 4 Fishen]

Reaching the moon: impossible, until we decided to go
Curing smallpox: prayed to God for centuries. Man eventually beat it.
Curing HIV/AIDS: while not cured, its well on its way. It was deemed impossible not 30 years ago.
Sailing around the world: impossible, until someone decided to go for it.
Flying: impossible. Look at Icurus. He flew. Got cocky. Went to close to the sun, then fell to earth. Now, millions do it a day.
Point being: its only impossible, if you think it is.

You are FORGETTING that God gave man the wisdom to do so.

 

[Wired 4 Fishen]

But how do you KNOW it's God will? Man, I thought, cannot comprehend how God thinks, yet Man claims to know God's will.

Simple, He had His Will for Man put into a book called the Bible.
His Word is His Will for Man.

Man, I thought, cannot comprehend how God thinks

You are thinking wrong

It is written
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

BUT we can get our thoughts to be as His thoughts by submitting unto His Ways.

How about moving this to a new thread.
We have totally derailed brother Chads thread.
Blessings to you

 

[SirWulfe]

You are FORGETTING that God gave man the wisdom to do so.

Trial, and error, gave Man the wisdom. Scientific study, and careful examination, gave Man the wisdom. To point out: during the Black Plague, Man prayed to God, spent many an hour in the church. Millions died. Through scientific study, out breaks of such magnitude are unlikely. Full dependance on God, just like full dependance on ones parents, leads to stagnation. While God doesn't need to be replaced, Man must be allowed to stretch it's own legs.

 

[SirWulfe]

The

Simple, He had His Will for Man put into a book called the Bible.
His Word is His Will for Man.



You are thinking wrong

It is written
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

BUT we can get our thoughts to be as His thoughts by submitting unto His Ways.

How about moving this to a new thread.
We have totally derailed brother Chads thread.
Blessings to you

The Bible, though, was written over many, many centuries. Storys passed orally, father to son, mother to daughter, only to be written down years, decades, even centuries later, by people who weren't there. So, by submitting, you hope to know Him better. To know God, is to be God. Therefore, if you were to submit, and know Him fully, would that not place you next to God?

I'm okay moving to another thread. Whatever my beliefs, I didn't intend to highjack someone else's thread.

 

[amadeus2]

But

But, wouldn't it be better if God taught some independence to Man? I hate tl get off track of the main thread, but it is a serious question.

Your "wouldn't it be better if God..." idea is where you miss God's message. God has a plan and we need to strive to see it and then to follow it, not try to correct it or improve it... as if we could.

God gave us everything we have, but from the first we [men] have used things in our own way because that is what we wanted rather than following the pattern He provided using the rules He established:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

We must in order to please God obtain a proper vision of His plan and go according to what we see. Man has seldom done it that way and man has continuously gotten himself into trouble with God instead of pleasing Him:

"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." Prov 29:18

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." I Cor 13:12

 

[amadeus2]

But by choosing complete and utter obedience, you are forgoing your free will. You are saying "I don't want to think for myself, or do anything for myself. I want to rely completely on you for everything." The Bible is full of people who go, and do, for themselves. Fully independent people. While they may be doing something in the name of God, they pull through on their own.

You are misunderstanding what freedom, which we at times call "free will", means according to God. That is the important meaning. See two verses, one from the OT and one from the NT:

"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:15

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Matt 6:24

Effectively God, OT or NT, gives us only two choices, to serve Him or to go our own way. Yes, we have the authority to go our own way. God gave it to us. But what is required for a man to please God is to give that authority back to God and leave it always with Him. So how should we do that? We seek from God what He wants from us and then we ask Him to make that what we want. Then we move ahead according to what He wants.

The men in the Bible who did things for themselves in their independence as you indicate always missed God's perfect way when they did that. God, however, who has never changed, always recognized the frailty of men and was merciful if a man's heart was right even though his choice at times was in error.

 

[amadeus2]

I think man has proven nothing is truely impossible.

You speak perhaps of our marvelous technology, but something is wrong, isn't it? You can build a computer and have almost instantaneous communication via the Internet as we are doing here, but still people are starving and people are sick and people are greedy and people are selfish and people are cruel. Man cannot correct himself in these and his many other shortcomings, yet he is "proud" of what he has done.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud." Prov 16:18-19

"O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Jerem 10:23

Jesus came so that we might have Life. People living without what Jesus brought are dead in the eyes of God. Too many people who started out with Life and turned back to death and then wonder why their walk with God is not accomplishing what it should.

 

[amadeus2]

Trial, and error, gave Man the wisdom. Scientific study, and careful examination, gave Man the wisdom. To point out: during the Black Plague, Man prayed to God, spent many an hour in the church. Millions died. Through scientific study, out breaks of such magnitude are unlikely. Full dependance on God, just like full dependance on ones parents, leads to stagnation. While God doesn't need to be replaced, Man must be allowed to stretch it's own legs.

Foolishness! Are you a believer in Christ and His Way? [No need to answer the question.] The same problems exist among men today as did during the times of the Black Death. It is the same problem that Adam and Eve had. We all are listening to the serpent's words:

"And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Gen 3:4-5

Men want to do it their way but receive all of the benefits and blessings of God. When things go wrong, then maybe they will fall to their knees and ask God for help. We need to seek Him on the mountaintop as well as down in the valley. If our nations and our churches don't change their wrong ways they will receive finally the same answer the rebellious Israelites in the wilderness received:

"Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice;
Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:" Num 14:22-23