Does God have control over the people who populate Heaven?

[billwald]

Some say Heaven is a better place than Eden. Anyone on this list want to spend eternity in a child-like state pruning trees?

 

[rbell]

Some say Heaven is a better place than Eden. Anyone on this list want to spend eternity in a child-like state pruning trees?

Well Bill, you don't have to go if you don't want to...

 

[billwald]

You think Eden still exists someplace?

 

[rbell]

You think Eden still exists someplace?

Geographically, I don't know...but even if it's a place we can get to...the setting has been destroyed due to sin.

My original point was that our "wanting to know what God knows" (more like wanting to "be in charge") was what took Eden out of the picture.

Your statement,

Some say Heaven is a better place than Eden. Anyone on this list want to spend eternity in a child-like state pruning trees?

misses the mark IMO as to what the world before sin was like.

 

[BobRyan]

Some say Heaven is a better place than Eden. Anyone on this list want to spend eternity in a child-like state pruning trees?

#1. Some say EDEN is nothing more than Hominids surviving and evolving in a death-starvation-predation-extinction world -- and that mankind "FELL" from that paradise into what we have today.

Any rational being can easily see that what we have in first world countries is "paradise" compared to "the caves".

#2. Eden is not the dark domain of ignorance that you suppose sir. God walked with man - visibly in the cool of the evening. Man's first science teachers were Angels and God Himself. To SUPPOSE that a laborator that IS EARTH would have been "too simple" and that teachers that ARE God and the Angels "insuffiently challenging" is to go far down the wrong alley. (Hint the Discovery Channel recently completed a series on PLANET EARTH that shows a post-fall decaying world to STILL be absolutely astonishing from the standpoint of almost any kind of science, discovery, exploration)

Rather the LONG life recorded for mankind preflood and the GIANTS mentioned preflood show a phyiscal state far beyond ours and possibly equal to the task of being able to LEARN from such other-world intelligences as God Himself and His angels.

If one is to speculate about it - I would rather go a direction consistent with the tiny glimpses that we get into that preflood prefall world than imagine it in such nursery school terms.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

You think Eden still exists someplace?

The Bible says that God sent an Angel to guard the entrance to the Garden so that mankind could not enter for all those years prior to the flood. What a witness that must have been to preflood man - yet the greater the light the greater the sin in rejecting it.

A "hint" here is that God took the time to preserve and protect the Garden after the fall. If He remained consistent with his actions pre-post fall then it is not unthinkable that He has found a place to preserve it "still".

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Bob, it's just like you posting your multi-colored models and such. The content of the video explains itself throughly. It is not a matter of me not wanting to post the whole thing, in my own "writing", but it was a matter of not having enough time to do so.

You wouldn't want your name on it because you're a flaming Arminian!...

If the points in the video (which I agree with) are wrong, then by all means, enlighten me.
Dustin

Saying that you do not agree with all points in the video then asking me to refute the video is not "Substance" sir.

If you have a doctrinal argument - feel free at some point to make it - instead of dishing out insults as though you had done something significant. Any child can kick someone next to him - try a productive substantive approach instead.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

I would like to volunteer of my own free will to be God's robot! It's better than being Satan's bond-robot.

Arminians have always said that Calvinists choose that of their own free will.

Arminians also claim that God has predestined us to continually expose the doctrinal flaws in Calvinism for the benefit of both Calvinist and Arminian Christians world wide.

So -- apparently we have some form of agreement here.:laugh: :thumbs:

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Thanks for the replies.

I suppose what baffles me most is the underlying question - why would God WANT to know everything?

A child learns tic-tac-toe. When he discovers that he knows the end of the game after the first move, he moves on to checkers.

It always comes back to "It is really TOUGH to BE God" doesn't it!

Only usually we don't get to that point so quickly in the A/C topic threads.

in Christ,

Bob