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Thinking this way can really change everything. Don't take my word for it. Check it out for yourself and see what the Bible says. I would like to offer one insight that helped me though. In every Biblical controversy I have studied I found that the main Biblical reason that the controversy continues to exist is that there are apparent tensions in the scripture on the subject. In this case there are various statements throughout scripture that affirm the awesome extent of God's power, authority, knowledge, wisdom, foreknowlege etc, as well as seemingly sweeping statements about what God can and will accomplish. And, there are also lots of passages that seem to assume that people have lots of autonomy, that God talks about the future in conditional terms, that God changes His mind, that lots of things happen that God was opposed to and apparently did not want to occur, and various other reasons to think that the future is unsettled in many respects and that God has given people the power to affect what will happen. In this particular controversy I think the main thing to consider that helps make sense of this tension is to notice how wide scope of the verses that talk about God's power and determinations is. Consider Isaiah 46:10 and Ephesians 1:14. They say "I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please'" and "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will". There are two very important clauses in these verses that often get ignored. They are "all that I please" and "the purpose of his will". People often just assume that since God had the power to do whatever He wanted to do and that He could have created a world in which everything was predetermined that He did do that and/or that now that things are going along as they are if He wants things to go this or that way that somehow He dynamically and inevitably determined how everything would go. There is a lot of double speak in this area especially by Molinists and to a slightly lesser extent by people who believe in simple foreknowledge. And there is a lot of dogmatism by people on the determinist end of the spectrum. I will just say that we need not infer that it was the purpose of God's will to control everything, and that we should remember that there are things that are impossible for God. For example we are told it is impossible for Him to lie in Hebrews 6:18 and that He cannot be tempted by evil in James 1:13. These are not negative qualities and apparently not something God has the option of choosing for Himself. One logical implication of the idea that God cannot lie is that He cannot make a commitment and fail to keep it and He cannot really give something and then take it away in a way that conflicts with the terms of His original gift (Romans 11:29). So, if God gave people authority over the earth (Genesis 1:26-30, Hebrews 2:6-9) for some period of time He apparently can't revoke the power He delegated unilaterally without in effect lying. Much of His frustration and other features of the Bible can be explained by this. In every controversy that I have been able to reach a confident conclusion about how to resolve the controversy I found that one perspective would have adequate answers for all the claims made by opposing views that make at least good enough sense within their own view. I have not found that to be the case for the competing views. One really good way to get a feel for when a view may have a real weakness is to closely examine how they respond to the passages that people with opposing views offer as their own evidence. While what people say about their own view is certainly important, it's usually easy to see why they would think what they think based on the reasons they offer. Seeing if the responses they give to opposing views are reasonable is not always easy. In some controversies you may find that people will almost completely ignore the arguments of a particular opposing view, that they will dismiss them, or that they will just declare that they are heretics. Notice that those objections are not arguments that show how the verses the supposed heretics cite actually make sense in the view of the view of the person calling heresy. Cries of heresy are often the only response people with weak arguments can give, so they say it loud. Sometimes it's the very thing that people scream heresy about the loudest that fits the scriptures best. In general I have found that there will be one group who adequately answers every scriptural objection to their view in a way that makes sense and usually the other groups tend to ignore the positive arguments made by that same group the most. When you find that combination there is a good chance you have found the right answer to the question. I think their arguments mostly get ignored or that people will just go back to their own go to proof texts because there aren't any good arguments against their main positive proofs. You might find some of the videos I made on this subject and others to be worth your while. Some of them are here on my personal channel, but they are all on my other channel. www.youtube.com/@understandingperspectives9361/playlists

In every Biblical controversy I have studied I found that the main Biblical reason that the controversy continues to exist is that there are apparent tensions in the scripture on the subject. In this case there are various statements throughout scripture that affirm the awesome extent of God's power, authority, knowledge, wisdom, foreknowlege etc, as well as seemingly sweeping statements about what God can and will accomplish. And, there are also lots of passages that seem to assume that people have lots of autonomy, that God talks about the future in conditional terms, that God changes His mind, that lots of things happen that God was opposed to and apparently did not want to occur, and various other reasons to think that the future is unsettled in many respects and that God has given people the power to affect what will happen. In this particular controversy I think the main thing to consider that helps make sense of this tension is to notice how wide scope of the verses that talk about God's power and determinations is. Consider Isaiah 46:10 and Ephesians 1:14. They say "I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please'" and "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will". There are two very important clauses in these verses that often get ignored. They are "all that I please" and "the purpose of his will". People often just assume that since God had the power to do whatever He wanted to do and that He could have created a world in which everything was predetermined that He did do that and/or that now that things are going along as they are if He wants things to go this or that way that somehow He dynamically and inevitably determined how everything would go. There is a lot of double speak in this area especially by Molinists and to a slightly lesser extent by people who believe in simple foreknowledge. And there is a lot of dogmatism by people on the determinist end of the spectrum. I will just say that we need not infer that it was the purpose of God's will to control everything, and that we should remember that there are things that are impossible for God. For example we are told it is impossible for Him to lie in Hebrews 6:18 and that He cannot be tempted by evil in James 1:13. These are not negative qualities and apparently not something God has the option of choosing for Himself. One logical implication of the idea that God cannot lie is that He cannot make a commitment and fail to keep it and He cannot really give something and then take it away in a way that conflicts with the terms of His original gift (Romans 11:29). So, if God gave people authority over the earth (Genesis 1:26-30, Hebrews 2:6-9) for some period of time He apparently can't revoke the power He delegated unilaterally without in effect lying. Much of His frustration and other features of the Bible can be explained by this.

Good question. I don't know either.

😂

Ad hominem... Can't deal with the argument?, so you attack his garb. Got it.

I Samuel 16:7 "... The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

@@markporthouse thanks Mark. I will check the settings on the mic. Hopefully it is something I can resolve.

So are you saying you believe in Calvinism?

@@soundlycreative I feel it better to not make labels, because it pegs you into corner of having to agree with "your side" on topics and people tend to stop listening from the "other side" when you say you are on the opposite side. It should just be a reasoning from the text of scripture, which is what I tried to do above when discussing the flaws in the video.

@@jrmitchell12 interesting. I’ll have to now re-read your points and consider them vs the presentation.

😎 That verse means that the act or idea of sacrificing one's son to Baal did not come into God's mind, it came from the Israelites'. It doesn't mean that God did not know that the Israelites would do such human sacrifice.

@@calebjushua9252 open theism doesn’t say that God didn’t know, It just forces determinists to face the fact that the god of the Bible has a character of love and would never be the author of such an atrocity as determinism states that he is.

@@atyt11 I don't know what's your point. But, what I am trying to say is that instructing those Israelites to sacrifice their babies to Baal did not come to God's mind.

@@calebjushua9252 My point was I agree with you. God was not the author of the evil... Because He knows everything that is knowable. Molech was one of the Free choices available to humans sin-abled nature. Non -Open-theists strawman that open-theists think "God does not know" that is because they don't have a real rebuttle to what is so obvious in the Bible. God Knows ALL that is possible to know. God finds that real relationship with real image bearers is worth it. Playing barbies with creatures has ZERO value to God.

wow you *_are_* so special!!! How wonderful that God loves Jacob and *_YOU_* and hated Esau and everyone else.... I personally am glad that I am chosen *_in CHRIST_* bc Jesus came to save *_sinners_* and I know for sure that I am one of those... but congratulations on discovering how super-duper special you are!

@@inTruthbyGrace thanks so much --- you actually agree with the Saviour about my position in HIM. I believe what HE says about me as the TRAVAIL of HIS soul. HE suffered greatly for my sins upon HIMSELF

@@Over-for-now no, you clearly do not... your comment point blank says God choose *_YOU_* .... you mentioned nothing, absolutely *_NOTHING_* about Jesus at all nor about God's having chosen you in Jesus... that is the problem with Calvinism... Jesus is an after thought bc you imagine and you speak that God chose you ....it is all about YOU! "a good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

@@inTruthbyGrace ---You haven't read where Jesus says He will not lose any THAT the FATHER GAVE HIM?? I'm a gift from the Father to the Lord Jesus Christ

@@inTruthbyGrace I know it offends you deeply THAT lam simply trusting in the FINISHED work the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished for me. Iam not a calvinist and don't care about what man says. GOD receives ALL the GLORY and HE WILL NOT share HIS GLORY with another You CAN have THAT assurance also

You should check out my other channel here th-cam.com/play/PL3c6ubh1HrRgFu0_zyObJ1XkZ-Cxz39RC.html or my website at UnderstandingPerspectives.com where I analyze views of hell and explain some of the reasons why people in different groups think like they do about hell and other issues such as foreknowledge and the identity of Jesus.

Thanks for the comment. I'll check those features out. I didn't realize it did all that.

I'm very cautious to call something "heresy" because who am I and under what authority am I able to make those claims, but in this case I am as close as it comes to calling it heresy as I can be. Open theism cherry picks verses. It doesn't attempt to understand the passage in any deep and meaningful way, especially in context to the other verses, it makes the promises of God hopes and dreams and limits God to a superior power. Instead of all things being held together by the power of his word, God must "take risks" and wait to see the outcome of even His own decisions.

@@blusheep2 The promises of God aren't hopes and dreams when God is briliant and wise, He is so wise that He actually can achieve what He wants in a world with creatures with libertarian free will and future being partly open. I think God in partly open future is way more powerful and smart than God in future settled from eternitiy.

@@dimitartodorov4826 To each his own but it makes God out to be guessing. IF by saying that he is so wise that he can predict everything that can ever happen accurately and therefore he can inject himself into history when he needs to prod it in one direction or another then you are really only saying that God is actually omniscient and God doesn't take any risks. That isn't what open theism teaches. Open theism teaches that he doesn't know what we are going to do. He only thinks he knows and therefore "risk." And if He takes a risk with me, on my level, and all of history is one risk after the other then God can't predict anything or if He can then his predictions are just that... predictions. Like an investor predicts the outcome of a companies stocks. Most of the time he will be right but sometimes he gets it wrong. That is limiting God or making him more powerful and smarter. My biggest problem with Open theism is that they all sound like atheists. I've been talking with atheists for about 5 years now and open theists and atheists use the same reasoning and arguments. Open theists sound like people that are on the edge of giving up their faith but have found a way to rationalize all the difficult pieces in the Bible like hell, penal substitution, genocide in the OT, etc. For the open theist, hell doesn't exist, everyone goes to heaven with various rewards, penal substitution is not a thing, and the conquering of Canaan wasn't commanded by God but only perceived by the Hebrews to have been commanded so.

@@blusheep2 Its not limiting God since He had a plan what to do as every possiblity was certain. Like how the chess master is limited if He is ready for every possible move you can make. Not knowing with certainty which move are you gonna chose doesnt change a thing since He is prepared for whatever you play. I dont know if "they sound like an atheists" its a sound argument. Open theists have different views on hell, I mean there many non-open theists with different view on hell. Christ Date for example is a famous calvinist who support annihilationism aka conditional immorality. I no, for the open theist everyone doesnt go to heaven. What are you describing is universalism and very few people hold this position today, in fact I dont know even one Open Theist holding universalism. Different people have different views of OT genocides. Greg Boyd is the only open theist I know saying that the genocides are not commands from God.

@@dimitartodorov4826 I admit that my exposure to Open Theism is primarily Greg Boyd. I've been to his church by the way, a few years back before I even knew that Open Theism was a thing. My wife had been watching the podcasts of his service for a few months and really wanted to attend. Although his sermon was fine other things about the church raised some red flags. Primarily their tiny library of books for sale. They were books promoting stuff like the Documentary Hypothesis and written by his number 2 pastor, though the name slips my mind. That was a real shock to me. I then have an acquaintance that I see one a year who was heavily influenced by Greg Boyd. That is where I heard the "universalism" side of Open Theism but if that isn't generally accepted nowadays in Open Theist circles then I think that is good. Of course, I'm forced to wonder why it ever was. Her view was, sort of, the opposite of Chris Date. Everyone gets eternal life but only some enter the New Jerusalem. The third exposure to OT was from Pastor Mike Winger who did a teaching on it. He did primarily focus on Greg Boyd. So, maybe this is why I have seen Greg Boyd as the poster child for OpenT. How is an infinite number of plans a plan at all. Isn't that just reaction? When Ezekiel prophesied the rise of Babylon then Persia, then the Greeks, then the Romans and did so with incredible detail, that speaks to a God that knows what will happen. Not a God that guesses what will happen and had a plan for each contingency. Think about it a bit. If God constantly adjusts his plans to fit the unknown choices of humans then how does he predict such detail 100s of years in the future? That would mean that either 1)God is going to inject himself against man's free will constantly, in order to steer the future, which is very Calvanistic, or 2)God can predict the future decisions of humans so perfectly that there is no difference from omniscience. There is no risk. I think the real problem here is that we are trying to describe God's actions on a timeline. God though is timeless. He is eternal. We live on a single dimension of time and it flows for us in only one direction. It might be that God exists in an infinite number of timelines so that on our timeline God takes risks but because he exists on an infinite number of intersecting timelines to our then He also knows the past and the future as if they are all "now." In philosophy there is a discussion about the nature of time. Its often referred to as A theory or B theory of time. I've always been partial to the A theory of time which what we experience. One minute leads to the next and it only flows in one direction. But then I began to read some quanutm mechanics. Specifically the Quantum observer effect and Quantum decoherence. I'm no expert and the topic is relatively new to me but in order to test the quantum observer effect they did an experiment on Quantum decoherence. So, just in case you are unfamiliar... the quantum observer effect essentially says that a particle exists as a wave of possibilities until it is measured by a conscious observer which causes it to collapse into one of its probabilities. The decoherence experiment put this to the test and found it to be true but they found something else that was really interesting. Something they observed late in time had an effect on what the particle did in the past. A present observation effected what the particle did in the past. Very interesting but it sounds a lot more like the B theory of time or what is sometimes called the "block universe." I'm not convinced but this demonstrates how wacky reality really is and trying to fit God into our limited perceptions is probably not going to describe truth. So, when I see God predicting highly detailed future events, I can't conclude that God takes risks. At least not in the sense that we take risks. There has to be much more to it that we just don't see. Maybe there is a way for God to be a risk taker and omniscient at the same time. Who knows but He is omniscient.

That's a good question. I am persuaded that the scripture teach that the future is partly open. I think this is an important piece of making sense of the problem of hell, evil, and suffering, but it certainly doesn't fully answer the question. I don't know for sure what you mean by damned, but since the most common belief about hell today is that God will torture the wicked forever in fire I would not be surprised if that is what you think about that subject. I would encourage you to consider the possibility that you have inherited a mistaken view of that subject and investigate that issue for yourself. I have another channel with some videos dedicated to the purpose of explaining controversies from various perspectives. I have a series about hell there that you might find interesting. This is a link to that playlist. th-cam.com/play/PL3c6ubh1HrRgFu0_zyObJ1XkZ-Cxz39RC.html The question about suffering and evil is a harder and much broader issue than the question of hell. I have some thoughts about it, but I haven't prepared a presentation of my own on the subject. However, I would highly recommend listening to this series on the subject. It is the best thing I've heard about this by far. restitutio.org/2020/10/22/362-why-god-allows-suffering-1-brandon-duke/ restitutio.org/2020/10/29/363-why-god-allows-suffering-2-brandon-duke/ These two episodes are good too. Another person who disagrees with some of the premises in the first two episodes raises some objections and they have a really good conversation about them. restitutio.org/2020/11/05/364-challenging-soul-making-theodicy-1-brandon-duke-jerry-wierwille/ restitutio.org/2020/11/12/365-challenging-soul-making-theodicy-2-brandon-duke-jerry-wierwille/ Thanks for watching. I hope you find this material to be helpful.

You call it reckless that we dont make our own decisions,, ? So you're saying when a child is raped,, it's just as God has planned?? I don't and wouldn't, follow a God that causes sadistic things to happen!,,.. And also that someone be punished for something they themselves had no control over?,,, talk about a very unfair and actually evil God your following,,,,,might as well call him Satan,,,