PREDESTINATION
In my
undergraduate years, I discovered that the issue of predestination was so
controversial like it remain today, that many Christians lived in confusion and
disillusionment. Some Christians believe that God has already assigned who will
be who in this world. The base of this teaching is ROMAN 8:29.
It reads ‘’for whom he did foreknow, he did also
predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the
firstborn among many brethren.’’ The controversy is not derived from the
text as a whole but the word Predestination. The question is does God
predestine? Is Predestination biblical? Like we have said in the previous topic(get my book ''is the church reprobate?'' on amazon.com),
only few people in the history of the world have preexistence before God. Examples
are Jesus, our Lord, Jeremiah, Josiah, etc. These few individuals preexisted
before God, because even before they were born, their names and acts were
already foretold by God.
Even before his birth, Prophet Isaiah had the privilege
to get several information about Christ. In ISAIAH 9:6, the prophet says of
Christ, ‘’for unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his
name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting
Father, the Prince of Peace….’’ Even while he was yet to be born, the
Prophets had already declared his acts. Read ISAIAH 53: 1-12. The same could be
said of Josiah the king of Judah, Jeremiah the prophet, etc. Read 1KINGS 13:2,
JEREMIAH 1:5.
Besides
these few individuals, humans have no preexistence, so there is no way God
would determine who is who. If there is predestination, why would God regret
creating man in GENESIS 6:1? Would God not have known that man was going to
disappoint Him even before creation? Note that we are not trying to determine,
here, what God can do or cannot do. But we are only saying that human being,
you and I, came to life on a particular day, and assuming today is 27th
February, 2016, at 5.25PM, none of us has any life beyond that particular time.
Another
argument thrown in by Predestination theory is prophesying and dreams. Some
people believe that the prophesy they received or dream they dreamed about
tomorrow or future is sacrosanct. That is not correct. There are people in
scriptures and outside scripture who had prophesies they never realized in
their life time. Prophesy and dream is simply a gradient or shadow-cast based
on our present positions. For instance, if Mr. A is standing at point D, His
shadow cast could simply be at point U. But if Mr. A changes position to point
W, his shadow would definitely change from point U. If point U was to be
success, now that Mr. A had changed position, would he still be successful? The
answer is no. so dream or prophesy is not an attempt for God to allocate destinies;
it is simply a sign post as to the suitability or otherwise of your present stands
or position.
Ohimai Daniel, +2347032452945
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