U
Usagi
Guest
thinkandmull,
Has God ever, to your knowledge, given a prophecy that specific, so that a person’s informed choice could refute it, without indicating that it was possible for the affected person(s) to choose otherwise?
When He had Jonah prophesy the doom of Nineveh, He left open the option that the people there could repent and not be destroyed. (Indeed, Jonah hated them so much for their past evils to his people that he didn’t want to pass on the prophecy, so they wouldn’t repent and would be destroyed!)
When Jesus spoke of His betrayal, as far as we know He never just said “Judas Iscariot will betray me, and he has no choice in the matter.” He knew it would be Judas, but Judas made his own decisions.
Likewise with the final Antichrist. Scripture indicates there will be such a person, but does not narrow it down to one poor guy who gets to know in advance that he’s stuck playing the villain in the final act of history. If and when such a person does rise, he will have made his own choices the whole way.
Oreoracle objects to this notion of free choice, saying that it is really “set in stone.” But ultimately, each of us actually makes only one choice in any given situation. Even if we might have made another, we don’t, and as far as we know the counterfactual universe in which we did exists only as a thought experiment, not a reality. If God perceives all things in time from all eternity, then He knows my choices – the things I actually do at each fork in the metaphorical road, rather than the ones I might have done instead – without nullifying the fact that I freely make each and every one of those choices.
Has God ever, to your knowledge, given a prophecy that specific, so that a person’s informed choice could refute it, without indicating that it was possible for the affected person(s) to choose otherwise?
When He had Jonah prophesy the doom of Nineveh, He left open the option that the people there could repent and not be destroyed. (Indeed, Jonah hated them so much for their past evils to his people that he didn’t want to pass on the prophecy, so they wouldn’t repent and would be destroyed!)
When Jesus spoke of His betrayal, as far as we know He never just said “Judas Iscariot will betray me, and he has no choice in the matter.” He knew it would be Judas, but Judas made his own decisions.
Likewise with the final Antichrist. Scripture indicates there will be such a person, but does not narrow it down to one poor guy who gets to know in advance that he’s stuck playing the villain in the final act of history. If and when such a person does rise, he will have made his own choices the whole way.
Oreoracle objects to this notion of free choice, saying that it is really “set in stone.” But ultimately, each of us actually makes only one choice in any given situation. Even if we might have made another, we don’t, and as far as we know the counterfactual universe in which we did exists only as a thought experiment, not a reality. If God perceives all things in time from all eternity, then He knows my choices – the things I actually do at each fork in the metaphorical road, rather than the ones I might have done instead – without nullifying the fact that I freely make each and every one of those choices.