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can God Override the Human will if He So Chose?
- Thread starter JesusFan
- Start date
convicted1
Guest
God can do whatsoever He chooses to do.
"The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will." - Pr. 21:1
God doesn't have to 'override' human will.
Do you mean as in a sort of mind control wherein your will is no longer your own?
If so, I'd say of course God has the power to do anything but no he does not remove free will choices directly in the way I asked above.
However it is obvious that God can, did and does change our will for His purposes in many other ways.
I'd start with a study of the guy He sent to sleep with the fishes.....
How about King Nebuchadnezzar?
Too often our will must be broken for our own good. Thank God that He bothers at all to steer, prod and guide our will.
Ask Paul on his way to Demascus.
So he had no choice in going to Annaias?
convicted1
Guest
Nope. Didn't you read in Acts where they led him around in bonds and chains? Oops. That's later on in the bible....:laugh:
glfredrick
New Member
Of course He can, and He has and still does...
But the way God does this is not always the way the nay-sayers against His sovereignty imagine. He simply arranges things so that the one whom He is interested in changing sees things His way. No violation of the will of either in that regard.
Oh, and it is literally child's play for God to change someone's mind or heart. I recall very well how He changed mine. It was simple for Him, not so simple for me, but PRAISE HIM, He did it! :thumbsup: :saint:
My life is saved because He sovereignly changed my mind so that I would not have to come to Him kicking and screaming, and more so, he did all that without another human being getting involved in any personal sense. In other words, no one "talked me into" or out of anything.
But the way God does this is not always the way the nay-sayers against His sovereignty imagine. He simply arranges things so that the one whom He is interested in changing sees things His way. No violation of the will of either in that regard.
Oh, and it is literally child's play for God to change someone's mind or heart. I recall very well how He changed mine. It was simple for Him, not so simple for me, but PRAISE HIM, He did it! :thumbsup: :saint:
My life is saved because He sovereignly changed my mind so that I would not have to come to Him kicking and screaming, and more so, he did all that without another human being getting involved in any personal sense. In other words, no one "talked me into" or out of anything.
Skandelon
<b>Moderator</b>
Explain something to me. If a person's heart is as God determined it to be in the first place, then what exactly is God "changing?" Isn't he just changing what He had already determined?
How is anything really "changed" in a world where God has casually predetermined (through second/third causes etc) from the very beginning? To speak of man's will being changed one must first establish that the man has some since of independence on which to base the separation between what is God's will and that which is being 'changed.'
I would encourage you and all Christians not to concern yourself on finding the place where divine sovereignty and human responsibility ultimately meet. The Bible teaches both. What seems a paradox in our mind is perfectly reconciled in the Lord. These two teachings are like a set of train tracks which run side by side through out history and appear to come together in the distance. It is not man's to know all the mysteries of God's design. If we knew all things, then man, rather than God, would be God.
God does not have to make things happen in order for Him to know the future, God dwells in the eternal present where there is no past or future. Man has a really hard time understanding that, but if men would only consider the Apostle John's testimony of what he saw in the tribulation when it was as yet still at least 2,000 years away, then they might catch a glimpse of how that can be done.
There is a reason God did not just create man unable to sin in the first place and bypassed sin altogether, and that same reason is why God refuses to violate a person's exercise of his own choice in whether to believe God or not.
be thankful that God can cause ALL things to happen after His predestined Plan IF he so wills, as that would be the ONLY means/way you and I would ever have gotten saved!
glfredrick
New Member
You know what the Bible says about God hardening hearts... He is as capable of hardening as He is of drawing and softening. All in His timing.
Second, you also know (KNOW) that God has not set aside human actions. We are not mindless robots who just go about according to some divine plan.
Seeing as how you KNOW both of these things, why do you yet insist on making a point that is in fact an intentional fallacy? Is it THAT important to score points with the peanut gallery that follows you?
It's just too bad God didn't treat everyone the way He treated you, then, since there seems to be an enormous number of sinners still headed to hell for being ignorantly born in the sins of others.
The question was: can God Override the Human will if He So Chose?
It was Paul freely chosen will to go to Damascus and persecute Christians. God decided otherwise. So yah, I think God overrode Paul's will.
quantumfaith
Active Member
Ultimately we are automatons and you KNOW this, if EVERYTHING was intentioned and determined. And I rather like peanuts. It is great living down here in the south where peanuts have been a staple crop. I am grateful for the reasoned, articulate way that Skan asks questions and defends his positions. Your "peanut gallery" comment is off base and you KNOW it.
quantumfaith
Active Member
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
Skandelon
<b>Moderator</b>
Yet, I've yet to hear a Calvinist sufficiently explain why God would judicially hardened a man born totally depraved. Why blind a man born totally blind?
God seals a man in his hardened condition so as to accomplish a redemptive purpose, but if Calvinism is true there would be no reason for Jesus to have spoken in parables and for God to have sent Israel a 'spirit of stupor.'
I never said that is what you believed, and I think you KNOW that. But it may be easier for you to put words in my mouth and then attack for those in your gallery...oh wait...never mind. :tongue3:
Thats not overriding his will, its putting a circumstance before him where his will changed. He was still free to believe it was Christ, free to dismiss the account (the jews dismissed much more wonderous signs than that), and free to obey Him in going to Annanaias.
glfredrick
New Member
Guess the peanut gallery is speaking... :laugh: