[MENTION=9401]LucyJr[/MENTION]
First God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh to
"to let My people go." And Pharaoh would have let the Hebrews go. Sure he would, had not God Himself intervened. Why would Pharaoh let them go? Because Pharaoh’s heart was both
soft and weak. A soft and weak heart was no match for God. Pharaoh would have caved in and let His people go. But God did not want Pharaoh to let His people go. He asked Pharaoh to let His people go, but He didn’t want Pharaoh to let them go this easily.
Next God has to do something in order to prevent Pharaoh from letting His people go. God actually wants Pharaoh to go against His stated will. God’s stated will is "let My people go," but God doesn’t want Pharaoh to do God’s stated will at this time. He wants Pharaoh to resist God.
God has not changed, God still wants mankind to resist Him. But Pharaoh (just like the rest of humanity) is too weak and soft to resist God. So what does God do? Two things:
- "And I will harden [Heb: qashah—to make hard] Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay My hand upon Egypt, and bring forth Mine armies, and My people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shallknow that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth Mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them"
After God hardens Pharaoh’s heart [makes it harder than it was], and Pharaoh resists God’s will and refuses to let the Hebrews go, God then puts greater and greater plagues upon Egypt until even hard-hearted Pharaoh gives in and lets the people go. But notice what God does after this.
- "For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness has shut them in. And I will harden [Heb: chazaq—to make strong and courageous] Pharaoh’s heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord. And they did so" (Ex. 14:3-4).
Pharaoh was naturally too soft of heart to resist letting the Hebrews go, and so God
hardened his soft heart so that he would resist and would not let the people go until God first made a great display of His strength to the Egyptians. And after Pharaoh did let the people go, God wanted Pharaoh to try and follow after them and kill them. But this time we find that Pharaoh’s heart was too weak. And so again, God strengthens and gives courage to Pharaoh’s weak heart, and Pharaoh charges after Israel only to be totally defeated by God in the Red Sea.
Well, there it is. How hard is that to understand? But who will believe it? From Pharaoh’s birth until his death, God had a purpose for Pharaoh’s life, and God controlled every aspect of it. Pharaoh had not "free will" in any of these events. God changes not; He operates the same way in everyone’s life. You will either be a vessel of honor or a vessel of dishonor.
The example of the disciples forsaking Jesus is so important to the question of fee will that we are going to stay with it a little longer. Can we believe that Jesus could have told His disciples the following:
"And Jesus said unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night, but then again, maybe not all of you will be offended, seeing that all of you have a free will to will against My pronouncement…."
Or maybe this to Peter:
"And Jesus said unto him [Peter]
Verily I say unto you, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shall deny me thrice, but then again, maybe you won’t deny Me three times, seeing that you have a free will that does not need to deny Me even once. It doesn’t depend on what I say, or circumstances brought about by My Father, or what God declares, but rather on your own free will."
Sounds a little silly when we look at it logically doesn’t it? Yet this IS the contention of those who believe in "free will." Maybe Peter will, but then again maybe Peter won’t, NOT EVEN GOD KNOWS FOR SURE. Almost sounds like blasphemy, doesn’t it? It is blasphemy.
To argue that when God prophesies, states, and intends that someone do a particular thing, that the person is still at liberty because of his supposed free will, to not do what God has said, is absurdity on the highest level. Yet this IS what the theory of free will demands.
The fact that God has a foreknowledge of everything proves that free will is an impossibility, as true free will could alter the future and therefore God could not have an absolute and true knowledge of the future. It is idiocy to state that man has a free will that is not made or caused to do as it does, and yet state that God knows in advance the only possible choice that a person must make.
How can one believe that if God states that a person will make choice A, that he is nonetheless still at liberty to make choice B? Let me restate that: Can God say that you WILL make choice A, but you can make choice B?
Can God say that such and such, WILL happen but that it doesn’t need to happen? The disciples WILL forsake and deny Christ, but they have a free choice NOT to forsake and deny Him? God knows in advance that something WILL be a certain way, and yet it doesn’t have to be that way? Am I going too fast for anyone?
Not only does the theory of free will demand that man be able to think uncaused thoughts and performed uncaused tasks, but that he can in fact, do these uncaused things contrary to and in opposition to God’s preordained stated plan and purpose. He must be blind indeed, who cannot or will not see that such a haughty presumption lifts such an one’s ego to that of a veritable "god’ in his own heart and mind.
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