Well, I do not believe God bypasses our ability to think and choose as we please, but I do believe He exerts a powerful influence to ensure we do not jeopardize His plan. How do you define the unusual amount of effort Jesus expended to persuade Balaam and Cyrus not to do something against the will of God?

MM: Well, I do not believe God bypasses our ability to think and choose as we please, but I do believe He exerts a powerful influence to ensure we do not jeopardize His plan.

Tom: His plan is that all be saved, isn't it? There's a statement from the Spirit of Prophesy where she wrote to someone saying that if that person received a hundred-fold deeper portion of the Holy Spirit, it wouldn't do any good (because the person's mind was made up). It's against God's nature to act contrary to the principles of freedom. Freedom is so important to God, He would rather die than act contrary to it. It's incredible how anxious God is not to stomp on our will. Simply amazing, really. We're not at all like God in this respect.

MM: How do you define the unusual amount of effort Jesus expended to persuade Balaam and Cyrus not to do something against the will of God?

Tom: God will take emergency measures at times. Also it is according to the principles of God to do things He would not otherwise have done because of prayer (this thought is from the SOP somewhere), so perhaps someone was praying in resptect to Balaam and Cyrus, and God was answering that prayer.

Balaam was a prophet of God, though at times a reluctant one. God had to remind him whose words balaam was speaking.
I dont think it would take all that much convincing to get cyrus to try and overthrow babylon inserting himself as king. Gods part there might just be providing the right circumbstances.

/Thomas

How free was Hazen Foss?

As I've talked about in another topic, I think we are pretty free. God did not create robots to follow His commands. There were two men selected before EGW, and both of them turned God down. God then had to go with plan C.

I do think that God has planned our lives, but we have the choice to go against His planning. He also knows what will happen, but in the line of fairness, he must let it happen (we must make the choices).

It is a fairly fatalist view to say that we are not free and our choices do not make a difference. One of the keys to success in college and work is to understand that the person ultimately responsible for everything that happens to one’s self is self. It is those who fail who say that circumstances or others are to blame.

Perhaps God is methodical, but that is what happend. God has a plan, but when humans don't follow it, God has another plan.

Does God have "hope"?

Luk 20:11 And again he sent another servant: and they beat him also, and entreated him shamefully, and sent him away empty.
Luk 20:12 And again he sent a third: and they wounded him also, and cast him out.
Luk 20:13 Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son: it may be they will reverence him when they see him.
Luk 20:14 But when the husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir: come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.

Is everything so "cut and dry" with the Lord?
Is the issue of sin and salvation more involved than we think?

He said: "It may be"

What does that tell us of the Lord's considerations?

Tom Is this the reference you were thinking of?:

"Your will must blend with the divine will, and you must submit to the divine working. Your energies are required to co-operate with God. Without this, if it were possible to force upon you with a hundred-fold greater intensity the influences of the Spirit of God, it would not make you a Christian, a fit subject for heaven. The stronghold of Satan would not be broken. There must be the willing and the doing on the part of the receiver." {ST, December 28, 1891

The key words are "blend", "submit", "co-operate" and "willing". There is nothing overwhelming, or over-powering here.

MM You stated some things that can only be attributable to a man that sees God as a god of force:

"However, and for reasons I do not clearly understand, this {your concept of God's 'pre-destined' and 'overwhelming forcing' of conscience} doesn't apply to choosing to be saved."

You do not understand because you have major misconceptions of God's character and man's destiny, from what I can salvage from reading years of your posts. You appear to assert that God prophecies and then by process manipulates people and events to make thing happen to vindicate, prove, justify, validate Himself. That is force.

Thomas Exactly! Notice that Balaam was not forced by the angel, nor was Cyrus forced either. If God was a Forcer, ther would be no contest at all, no competition.

The validity of God's ways was displayed eternally at the Cross; He needs no other proof of His Heart's desires for mankind or His methods. Miss that lesson and you miss the entire Plan.


Many Adventist do not see God as a puppet-master in even the smallest sense, rather we see that He foretells what will happen due to our motions and the consequences of them, not what must happen because of His decrees.

Yes, but if God hadn't gone the extra mile with Balaam and Cyrus things would have turned much different than God had planned. The prophecy of Cyrus would have failed, which would have made Isaiah a false prophet. Just exactly how free was the prophet Ezekiel? When the only other option is death do we really have a choice?

Ezekiel
3:17 Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.
3:18 When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked [man] shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.
3:19 Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.
3:20 Again, When a righteous [man] doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand.
3:21 Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous [man], that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul.