The Sovereign Prerogatives of God. Part [12] 12/27/2024 (Morning thought)

Hebrews 12:5 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: 6 For whom the Lord loveth he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives.

God’s foreknowledge of future events never forces anyone to do evil, but we have to come to grips with the fact that His foreknowledge is perfect, and thus, for our own good, and the entire universe as well, it is necessary that the Sovereign prerogative of God, to withhold classified information, be understood. Not only must it be understood thoroughly, but the human agents must also be willing to let God’s plan for our salvation run its course even though at times it might include situations that are not cute, to say the least.

Sometimes the only way to achieve some permanent good is to move forward with decisions and actions that can have adverse consequences up front, as was the case on August 6, 1945 when an American B-29 bomber dropped the first atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion promptly killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure.

Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor then announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, and ever since that episode, Japan has gone on to become a strong ally of the U.S. and one of its important trading partners.

Hebrews 12:11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

May The Lord add His blessing to the study of His word. God bless!

The Sovereign Prerogatives of God. Part [11] 12/27/2024 (Evening thought)

Genesis 3:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof thou shalt surely die.

Thus, God goes to work with His good plan in mind and He creates Adam, and Eve with the freedom of choice. They could use their freedom to be aligned with God’s will, as it pertains to not eating of the forbidden tree, or they could use their freedom of choice to misalign themselves with His will. Thus, you have a situation where man’s freedom of choice, and God’s perfect foreknowledge will meet at a crossroads, with Adam and Eve choosing not to align themselves with the will of God.

[Patriarchs & Prophets pp 49] God might have created man without the power to transgress His law; He might have withheld the hand of Adam from touching the forbidden fruit; but in that case man would have been, not a free moral agent, but a mere automaton. Without freedom of choice, his obedience would not have been voluntary, but forced. There could have been no development of character. Such a course would have been contrary to God's plan in dealing with the inhabitants of other worlds.

It would’ve been unworthy of man as an intelligent being, and would have sustained Satan's charge of God's arbitrary rule. God made man upright; He gave him noble traits of character, with no bias toward evil. He endowed him with high intellectual powers, and presented before him the strongest possible inducements to be true to his allegiance. Obedience, perfect and perpetual, was the condition of eternal happiness. On this condition he was to have access to the tree of life.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 10 I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

May God add His blessing to the study of His word. “Good night” and God bless!